


Have Your Cake and Eat It

by alisonchains



Category: Alice in Chains, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails (Band), Nirvana (Band), Soundgarden (Band)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Cheating, Comfort Food, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Crossover, Dark Comedy, Double Life, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Erotica, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Feeding Kink, Female Anti-Hero, Food Kink, Food Metaphors, Food Porn, Food Sex, Forbidden Love, Foursome - F/F/M/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Gratuitous Smut, Grunge, Heavy Petting, Interracial Relationship, Light BDSM, Long-Distance Relationship, Lots of Food, Love Bites, Love Letters, Love Triangles, Major Original Character(s), Mild S&M, Mistress, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Oral Sex, POV Alternating, POV Male Character, POV Original Character, POV Third Person, Phone Sex, RPF, S&M, Sex in a Car, The Author Regrets Nothing, Weight Gain, Weight Issues, Weirdness, Wordcount: Over 100.000, bandfic, cooking story, innuendos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-10-30 02:04:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 139
Words: 394,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17819720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alisonchains/pseuds/alisonchains
Summary: Mia Panadera first came to the United States from Puerto Rico in search of the American dream and ended up grinding away at two jobs at a bakery and a hair salon, and married to an angry, neglectful, abusive husband.And then he walks into the bakery one morning, with his long hair, round face, Danish accent, and monumental appetite. He’s short, he’s sexy, he’s the drummer, he won’t shut up, and his name is Lars. She feeds him and is willing to spark a romance with him through his stomach, but there’s her marriage, her friends, and most of all, her parents.She’s also got those bruises and scars all over her body, and to him, they seem to be coming out of nowhere. But instead of pulling away, he only finds her more attractive and intriguing. He wants her to follow him and his band around for their tour, and Seattle is beginning to appear to be a better place for her, but she didn’t come so far to turn her back on the place she worked so hard to be at and ultimately, her husband.She has to confess to him at some point, that is if she confesses at all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the wake of (and as kind of a response to) Tumblr's NSFW ban, and just because I have a crush on Mr. Lars. This beastie is also available on my Wattpad as the red delicious quartet: user/hcnewell  
> Enjoy (and my apologies ahead of time if I make you hard) ;) xo

Mia set down her scissors on the wooden shelf next to the mirror before reaching over for the wide push broom leaning against the wall. It had been another long day at Curl Up and Dye, the little beauty salon nestled on the southern end of Portland, the third day of her third week there. Even though baking was the one thing that kept her waking up on the particularly cold mornings, she had applied for a position there the day Wayne had lost his job at the newspaper back in August.  
She had grown frantic for two weeks when business slowed at her donut bakery, Smell the Magic, and wondered if they would have to resort to welfare for some time. Although Wayne vowed to find a job, he never bothered to tell her why he had lost it in the first place, and he also paced himself too much during the period of slow business; and yet she was far too fixated on landing that spot at the salon, mainly because it was a mere three blocks from their small house and she could walk home. She considered cutting and styling hair for people would keep her hands away from the baking sheets and the rolling pins for a couple of days at a time, and being at the salon allowed her to converse with people and not perform the simple task of taking orders for pastries over a glass counter. Mia was eager to come to the salon on her first day following her phone interview with her new boss.  
She brushed back tendrils of her long black wavy hair from her oval face before taking the broom the sweep up those stray pieces of hair before clocking out for the day. Every so often, she took a glimpse into the mirror on the wall to her right at her milky washed out complexion surrounding her deep set hazel eyes.  
She and her parents migrated to the United States from Puerto Rico when she was a toddler, but she lived in the Northwest since she was thirteen, which was the time she had found solace in the magic of baking, away from the kids at school. Her finest moment was when she and her mother had invented their own recipe for donuts based off of Mexican chocolate, wherein the frosting contained nutmeg and cinnamon, but also a shot of tequila. Mia had hope she would become a baker and then onto culinary school before finding her way to Cordon Bleu in France.  
Now, a twenty three year old woman carrying some extra pounds married to an American man and working two jobs with the sight of France fading away from view with each day. This was not the American dream she had been promised since she was learning English in kindergarten.  
Each glimpse into the mirror showed her another line on her face that might have been there, another fresh sprig of silvery hair on her temple that might have been there, or maybe it was the daily work load that never seemed to lift off of her shoulders that made her see the signs of aging upon her face. She continued to sweep up the hair until she formed a small pile in the center of the floor behind the check in counter. Mia thought about her day off in two days and her longing for a nice long sleep once her head hit the pillow the night before. Portland was supposed to get their first round of snow that night, too, and so she had all the more reason to snuggle down in bed with three blankets and a plush quilt.  
She stooped down for the dust pan leaning next to the chair to pick up that pile of clippings from the cold tile and thought about what to make for dinner that evening, that is if Wayne had already made something for the two of them. Once she threw out the clippings of hair in the nearby garbage can, she put away the broom and the dust pan in the closet at the far end of the room before she doubled back and signed out for the day.  
Mia slung her long black raincoat around her body and then picked up her purse and tugged her hood over her head to protect her from the rain. After locking the salon door and stuffing the key into her coat pocket, she wheeled around and strode at a brisk pace across the parking lot. It was a mere three blocks back home, but three blocks in the rain felt like thirteen blocks: Mia kept her head bowed as she made her way back to the little white house with muted blue trimming and a little oak tree at the corner of the yard.  
She padded up the walkway to the front door, only to open the door and take in the smell of something that gone stale taking up the entirety of the front foyer.  
“Wayne! I'm home!” she called out to the house, closing the door and tossing her house key into the ceramic bowl under the coat hooks.  
“Oh, hey, babe!” he replied from the kitchen down the hall. She took off her purse and then her coat, and hung both up on the hooks next to the door. Mia ambled down the hall to the small kitchen to find Wayne, a dark haired young man of middle height and a bit too much girth, cooking a pair of sandwiches in the skillet on the stove.  
“You're making sandwiches for dinner?” she asked him.  
“Yeah, I couldn't find anything else and so this was the first thing that came to mind,” he explained in a single breath as he turned both over with the metal spatula. “It's almost ready, by the way—”  
“We've got a fridge full of food, but—alright then.”  
She slipped past him for a plate out of the cupboard next to the refrigerator and set it down on the counter before her. She reached for the mayonaise jar sitting on the counter and picked it up by the lid when it slipped out of her hand and back onto the counter; the sudden drop sent her aback.  
“Wayne, what have I told you about not putting lids back on things?” she sputtered, screwing the lid back onto the jar with haste. He turned around a bit: it was difficult given the narrow kitchen and his large size, but he managed to peer over his shoulder at her.  
“Whatever, babe,” was all he could say as he took the skillet off of the stove and place both grilled cheese sandwiches on the plate; the heat from the skillet made Mia recoil to the side.  
“What do you mean 'whatever'?” she demanded.  
“I mean, whatever.”  
“Whatever what?”  
“Whatever this is supposed to be.”  
“Whatever this is supposed to be? This is supposed to be me telling you to clean up after you use the kitchen! Wayne, I come home every day from a hard day's work and you can't be bothered to at least put the lid back on a mayonaise jar?”  
“Whatever…” he grumbled as he set the empty skillet back on the stove before stepping out of the cramped kitchen; he left the room before she could say another word. Mia bowed her head forward and stared at the two sandwiches, both of which had been burnt to a near black, and then the shiny white wedding ring on her left ring finger; her eyes burned with tears at the sight of the ring. It was something so simple and yet he refused to pitch in for it, even on the night she had be at the bakery at four o'clock in the morning.

Mia awoke that dark, rainy morning for a warm shower, eager to leave the house for the next seven hours. Once she had arrived at the small but cozy bakery with a long glass display and large black chalk boards on the wall behind her, she then changed into her fiery red apron and prepared to go to work, beginning with her trademark Puerto Rican donuts before moving onto the danishes and the white chocolate eclairs with Prince's symbol designed on the top in black frosting.  
She watched the sunrise for a moment before opening Smell the Magic for business that day before Marcia came in later that morning.  
She had taken a seat at the cash register near the door when he entered the room.  
He was short, with a full round face, like the full moon, and long wavy dark hair down past his shoulders and light lacy bangs over his thick eyebrows. He had a straight nose with a slight upturn at the end, full pinkish lips, and opaque skin; he was wrapped in a black coat and wore clean pressed black trousers and black boots.  
“Hello,” he greeted her with a little grin and a slight accent. His eyes seemed to penetrate her and also wander about the room at the same time.  
“Hi—what can I get for you?” she asked him, feeling her face grow hot as she climbed to her feet and headed for the center of the display, the site of the Puerto Rican donuts. He stuffed his hands into his pockets as he gazed on at all the delectable pastries and things behind the glass guard; he nibbled on his bottom lip all the while.  
“What do you recommend?” he asked her, putting emphasis on his “d” sounds.  
“Well—we have Puerto Rican chocolate donuts,” Mia told him, gesturing to the row of chocolate donuts decorated with deep red sprinkles before him. “They've got nutmeg and cinnamon in 'em, but they've got a shot of tequila in the frosting.”  
He raised his eyebrows at that.  
“That sounds lovely. Perhaps a little spicy, even.”  
“They're my signature donut,” she added, “I came up with the recipe and everything.”  
“Oh, really?”  
“Yeah.”  
“I should've known,” he replied, taking his hands out of his pockets and folding his arms over the top of the glass guard. “I should've known you've got the beauty of a young miss from the beautiful little island in the Caribbean. I'll take one for trying.”  
She giggled at that, feeling her face grow even warmer.  
“I like your accent, by the way,” she told him as she leaned to the side for a pair of latex gloves.  
“Eh, it could be better,” he shrugged his shoulders. “If I was back home in Denmark, it would be fine. But here, I am not too sure.”  
“Denmark?” she echoed, opening the glass door and picking up the first donut.  
“Denmark. I am—as about Danish as those danishes over there—” He gestured to the row of raspberry danishes at Mia's left. She showed him a sly grin.  
“May I ask what you do?” She handed him the donut.  
“I play drums,” he answered, his smile returning along with a little dimple in his chin.  
“Do you play in a band?”  
“Indeed I do. We just came back to America, I might add. We're playing a show here in Portland in about a week, and then going up to Seattle for two dates, and then to Canada.”  
She blinked several times at him.  
“Why a week?”  
“Our manager would rather we tour in increments instead of getting slammed with dates. You know—so we don't get fatigued and whatnot.”  
“That's genius.”  
“Yeah, I'll say—” Once he had taken his first small bite of donut, he gazed on at it with widened eyes as if he had seen something shocking. He blinked several times before glancing up at Mia.  
“What is it?” she demanded, reluctant to take off her gloves.  
“Miss, this is divine!” he exclaimed, his mouth full. He swallowed and gaped at her, his eyes gleaming.  
“Would you like another one?” she offered.  
“Yes, please! Gimme three!”  
Her heart fluttered as she reached for a paper bag and then back into the display for three more Puerto Rican donuts. She was about to hand him the bag and ring him up when she caught him swallowing down another bite.  
“I never caught your name, by the way,” she confessed, punching in the numbers on the cash register.  
“I'm Lars.”  
“Lars—I'm Mia. That'll be fourteen dollars, please.”  
He reached into his trousers pocket for some money and handed her a twenty dollar bill.  
“May I ask… are you doing something after your shift?” he lowered his voice. “I'd love to take you out for a bite to eat, seeing as I'm here for a week and everything…” His voice trailed off; she glanced over at his gazing at her left hand and the shimmering wedding ring on her ring finger.  
“Oh, I'd love to,” she confirmed, handing him six dollars in change. “That's just a ring, by the way. I'm not married.”  
“Oh, good. You worried me there for a second.” He stuffed the change into his trouser pocket. “Shall I meet you back here?”  
“Yes, please. I get off at eleven thirty.”  
“I shall see you then,” he confirmed, flashing her a wink before he stepped out of the bakery with the paper bag in one hand and a partially eaten donut in the other. Mia's heart fluttered in her chest as she watched him walk out of the building, but her gazing on at her wedding ring for a moment made her realize what she had done. But then on the other hand, it was just a ring to him, and then it would have to be just a ring to her.

“Marcia, come here! I need to tell you something,” Mia called out to Marcia once the last two customers left the shop with a box of donuts. An hour had passed since Lars visited the bakery, and already several people followed him, including the other head baker Marcia. She was a slender young woman at around the same age as Mia and with a bob of short, straight jet black hair and luminous green eyes; the other differences between her and Mia was she had no husband and she lived in Portland her whole life. They met in high school but they both wound up working at Smells Like Magic. She stood over at the far end of the shop with her apron tied tight around her body, set down a tray of unbaked donut rings on the wooden table there before heading back around the display towards Mia.  
“What is it?” asked Marcia once the glass door closed, and thus leaving the two of them alone in the bakery.  
“Okay, but I want you to promise me that you won't tell anyone about this,” Mia lowered her voice to a near whisper once she came within earshot  
“I met a guy this morning,” she whispered; she peered past the cash register to the door to make sure no one was coming into the shop right at that moment. “I met a guy who wants to take me out for a bite to eat today.” Marcia gasped and raised her eyebrows.  
“Really?”  
“Yeah.”  
She glanced over at the door again before returning to her.  
“Is—Is he hot?”  
“Yes, he is, if you're into his looks at all. He's short with long hair and a nice round face, and he's got this real cute dimple in his chin when he smiles. He's Danish, too.”  
“Wow. But, wait a minute. What about Wayne, though?”  
“What about him?” asked Mia.  
“Well—first of all, he's your husband,” Marcia pointed out. “I don't think he'd approve of his girl going out with another man.”  
“Marsh, trust me when I say this: it will not be a date. When I get home afterwards, I will just tell him that I took a friend out for lunch after work and that will be it after that.”  
“Yeah, but what if he wants to meet him?” Marcia pointed out. “Remember the first time he met me and Sonia?”  
“Pfff, how could I forget. He kept eyeing you from across the room while you were wearing that dress. I was worried that that would happen, too.”  
“Yeah, and Sonia told me she got a weird vibe just from sitting in the same room as him.”  
“Then again, your sister is a living radio antenna.”  
“That is true. But still—what if he wants to come home to you?”  
“Maybe you and Sonia could pose as my sisters? And I could take him back to your house? The three of us do look similar to one another after all.”  
“I dunno, Mia—I don't feel comfortable doing that.”  
“He's not going to be here long, though,” she recalled, “about a week, tops. He plays in a band and they are touring right now. But he also told me their dates are incremental, like they're playing here in Portland and then they go up to Seattle and into Canada, and then they have got some time off after that, so who knows where it could go? That is if it goes anywhere.”  
Marcia sighed through her nose before she turned around to look at the glass display behind them. She pressed her hands on her hips and stood there in silence for a few minutes before she said anything else.  
“Did he—Did he get some of your Puerto Rican donuts?”  
“He did, as a matter of fact. I gave him one for tasting and he just loved it so he bought three.”  
“I ask because they're getting down towards halfway and we've only sold a few in the last hour. He bought three? For himself?”  
“I think so, unless they were for his band mates. When I see him later, I'll ask him about it.”  
Marcia whirled around to show her the puzzled expression upon her face.  
“Was he fat or skinny?”  
“As slim as the street lamp outside here. May I ask why you ask me that?”  
“Just curious. I am your best friend after all. I'll speak to you about boys when your mom's not around.”  
The shop door opened right then and an older gentleman in a blue raincoat entered the bakery; Marcia flashed Mia a wink before she stepped to the glass display to greet him. No one was to know about Mia and Lars, until the minute she clocked out of her shift at five minutes to eleven o'clock.  
She stepped out from the front of the bakery into the back room to wash her hands and fold up her apron. Mia let the door close part of the way behind her back; she hung up her apron on the hook on the back of the door before turning to the sink. She removed her wedding ring and slipped it into her jeans pocket; she then let the warm water pour over the palms of her hands and her slender fingers, before moving it up all over her wrists and to her elbows. Soon, she put the soft, sweet smelling soap onto her skin. Over the tinkling of the water on the bottom of the basin, she heard Marcia speaking to someone in the next room.  
Mia peered at her reflection in the mirror, at her toussled hair and clear hazel eyes. She thought about Lars and what he did with those Puerto Rican donuts, and yet she also thought about Wayne back home and what she would tell him once the lunch date was over.  
“Mia!” Marcia hollered from the front of the bakery. She rinsed off the soap with haste and switched off the water before lunging for the paper towel dispenser on the wall. She dried off her hands and arms when Marcia called her name again.  
“Okay, okay, I'm coming!” she declared, taking the apron off of the hook and stepping out of the back room and back into the bakery. Lars stood before the glass case with his bangs matted to his forehead and his hands in his coat pockets. He showed her a warm smile once she entered the room.  
“There he is,” she declared as part of her greeting.  
“Here I am,” he reiterated, his cheek bones growing fuller with his widening smile. “Got caught up in the gully washer outside—” He gestured to the door and the droves of rain falling against the glass; he then returned to Mia with an excited glimmer in his eye.  
“I was just speaking to… what'd you say your name was?” he nodded his head to Marcia, who stood behind the glass case with an empty cookie sheet.  
“Marcia.”  
“Marcia, that was it! I like that name, by the way. Anyway, she and I were just talking about you.”  
“And? What did you tell each other?” asked Mia.  
“I was telling her how good of a baker you are,” he replied, bringing a hand to his stomach. “And I also told her that I gave my band mates those donuts and all three of them loved them just so much. We're definitely going to visit here whenever we come to Portland.”  
“Oh, you're such a dear,” was all Mia could say; she turned to Marcia as she set the cookie shelf down behind the display.  
“And what did you say to him?”  
“I was just agreeing with him wholeheartedly,” she answered, “and I also told him how much I love you like a sister.”  
“I had a feeling you were sisters—you look similar. Anyways, are you ready to go?”  
“I was born ready,” replied Mia; she knitted her eyebrows together as she gazed on at the sign out sheet laying atop the counter between the display case and the cash register. She signed herself out for the day and set down the pen, and turned to Marcia as she wiped her hands on her apron. “Marsh, have you seen my purse?”  
“Yeah, it's right here.” Marcia stepped towards the cash register, and stooped down for Mia's purse, and handed it to her. She thanked Marcia and, once they gave each other a hug over the counter, she and Lars headed out into the drenched street. She tugged her hood over her head and kept the folded apron close to her body, but he stood there with the rain pouring down over his long hair.  
“So where would you like to go?” she asked him over the roar of the rain around them.  
“I saw this little Italian place about a block away as I was coming here,” he explained, his eyelids fluttering from the stray drops of rain falling onto his head.  
“Even though it's a block, I don't really want to walk in all this rain,” she remarked, adjusting the shoulder strap on her purse. “And your hair is getting soaked on top of it all.”  
“Way ahead of you.” He turned around right as the black limo with tinted windows pulled up to the curb. Lars took a step to the rear passenger door and opened it for her.  
“Why, thank you,” she told him in a voice so light, it might as well have been part of the wind. She slid into the warm and dry interior and he followed into the seat next to her and shut the door behind him. They rolled forward down the street to the cozy Italian cafe on the corner: the whole way, Lars kept close to Mia even though his bangs dripped with rain water. She didn't mind if she got a little wet because they returned out to the rain for a few more minutes upon arrival. At one point before climbing out of the back seat, she examined his eyes more closely to find his irises were a soft, earthy green.  
She recalled one boy from her elementary school days: he had green eyes much like his, except he had soft silky blond hair piled on the crown of his head and a line of freckles over the bridge of his nose. He was Irish, if her memory rang true. She remembered her crush on him and she considered telling him but the opportunity never presented itself.  
After thanking his driver, Lars led her into the restaurant, towards the small table at the far edge of the room, away from any wandering eyes but right next to the window. He ran his fingers through his wet hair to keep it off of his face: his bangs stood on every which end and dangled down over his high brow.  
They both ordered linguine with lots of tomato sauce, except he asked for zucchini while Mia asked for strips of blackened chicken. He was eager to eat up pieces of garlic bread from the wicker basket in the middle of the table: she had but two slices of bread when he had topped off his fourth slice and went for a fifth.  
“My goodness, you're hungry!” she remarked.  
“Yeah, I simply do not mess around.” He stopped the waitress before she walked further past the table. “Can we get a refill please?”  
She nodded her head before reaching over to pick up the basket. He rubbed his eyes and rested his chin in the palm of his hand, and gazed on at her, with his mouth still full. Mia showed him a little smile.  
“So… tell me about yourself,” she began in a low voice. “Are your parents back in Denmark?”  
“They are, yes. I was going to be a tennis player but—”  
“Really?”  
“Oh, yeah. I was going to be the third generation in my family to play tennis for a living. My dad and my grandfather are both players, and so is my godfather. That was mainly why we moved here to America in the first place was to get me to enroll in training but—my passion is drumming and making music. It was just ten years ago when I knelt down before my grandmother's feet and begged her to get me a drum set. I promised her that I would play it every day.”  
“And sure enough you did.”  
“Indeed I did.”  
Bright rays of sunlight broke through the rain clouds outside and filtered onto the sides of their faces: Mia noticed the little dent, about the size of her pinky fingernail, right above his left eye.  
“What's—what's that?” She reached across the table and hovered the tip of her finger over the mark.  
“That would be my scar. My best friend—our singer—gave me that.”  
“Good Lord, what were you guys doing?”  
“You really don't want to know.” Right as he said that, the waitress returned with fresh bread; he lunged for the first slice of bread and took a large bite. He gazed on at her with his mouth full.  
“Don't spoil your lunch now,” she advised him.  
“I won't,” he told her in a muffled voice. She giggled and took a sip of water. Soon their food arrived and Lars set his napkin down in his lap before delving into his pasta. Mia told him about her home life and her passion for baking and cooking, but she added the caveat that she worked at Curl Up and Dye, a name that made him chuckle.  
“Curl Up and Dye? I absolutely love that name! I should throw that at Kirk when I see him again later tonight.”  
“Kirk?”  
“Our guitarist. He's real into horror and gruesome stuff, so he might like that name.”  
Within time, and reaching the bottom of his bowl, Lars set down his fork and rested his chin in the palm of his hand again. Mia made one final twirl of her fork and took in that last bite before wiping her mouth with the cloth napkin. He closed his eyes and let out a soft groan from the inside of his throat.  
“You've had enough,” she commented.  
“Indeed I have,” his voice broke. Mia recalled the conversation she had with Marcia back at the bakery. There was no way she could bring him home to Wayne when she already lied to him about her marriage.  
“Would you like to come over to—Marcia's house for dinner some time?”  
“I would love to. Why her house, though?”  
“I like to have dinner with her sometimes. She is my sister after all.”  
“I see. Well, I have band practice so I can't do it tonight as much as I would love to, but I would love to come over… when do you work again?”  
“I have tomorrow off, so we could do tomorrow night.”  
“Sounds good by me,” he agreed with her; he leaned back in his seat and rested his hands on his stomach. Mia licked her bottom lip at the sight of him relaxing in the seat across from her.  
“I think I know what we'll be making for you, too.”  
“Pasta?” he opened his eyes and tilted his head forward; when he raised his eyebrows, his whole face brightened up as much as the incoming rays of sun. She giggled at that, her laugh like tinkling wine glasses.  
“Maybe. Maybe just something that is all full of love and comfort.”  
“Like your donuts?”  
“Like my donuts?”  
“Mia, those were like beacons of love straight to our stomachs. I am sure whatever you and her will make for me will be just as lovely and tender to the empty space inside of me.”  
They split the bill and after he left a tip for the waitress, they headed back outside to the sidewalk. The rain had died down to a light drizzle and yet they still huddled next to one another until the limo returned to the curb before them. They climbed back into the rear part of the limo; Mia spoke to the driver through the separating window and gave him directions back to her little white and blue house with the oak tree in the front yard. Lars leaned back in the seat next to her with his hands still resting upon his stomach. Every so often, he let out a little groan from the inside of his throat. Every little groan, every little noise was a cue for her into knowing he was feeling quite full and loving every part of it.  
Mia nibbled on her bottom lip: there was a part of her that wanted to lay next to him and stroke the skin on his stomach to help him relax more. She pictured herself snuggling next to him following their dinner the next night, keeping her nose to the side of his neck and those wavy tendrils of hair cascading down from his head. She was about to tell him something when they pulled up to the curb before her house. Before she could climb out, Lars set a hand on her upper arm.  
“Where does Marcia live?”  
“Over on 82nd Street,” she replied, “right near the southeast college.”  
“Oh, okay! I can find my way there.” He flashed her a wink. Mia thanked the driver before she climbed out of the back onto the sidewalk with her purse over her shoulder and her folded apron pressed to her chest. The cold damp air around her was such a sharp contrast from the warm cozy feeling in the back of the limo and being so close to Lars' lush body; shivers shot over her skin as she ambled up the walkway to the front step. She slipped through the front door and closed it behind her. Wayne stepped out from the kitchen down the hall before her with a cross expression upon his round doughy face.  
“There you are,” he said in a flat tone of voice.  
“Were—Were you waiting for me?”  
“I was.”  
“Did—Did you make lunch?”  
“I was going to, but I needed you back here so you could help me.”  
“Wayne, I'm so sorry.” She hung up her purse and her coat while keeping her apron in her arms. She turned to see him folding his arms over his chest. “I—I went out with a friend, I thought you would understand—”  
“Sorry—you're always sorry, Mia. Sometimes I wonder why we're even together, but then I remember why.”  
“Why, Wayne?”  
“Because neither you nor I would have a place to go if we didn't have each other or this house.”  
“What do you want me to do, Wayne? Tell me. What do you want me to do?”  
“I want lines of communication between us.”  
“Okay, that's—fair enough. Is it alright if I go to Marcia's house for dinner tomorrow night?”  
“Just you? Not include me?”  
“Yes. She's my best friend and therefore, I feel like I should have dinner or lunch with friends whenever I want. If you want dinner for yourself, you can order Chinese or a pizza or go out.”  
“I don't want to go out alone, I'd look weird going out somewhere downtown by myself… and besides, you know I don't have any money. How am I supposed to even go out or order something for myself when I don't have any money?”  
“Okay, fine.” She turned around to her purse and took out a twenty dollar bill from her wallet. She strode down the hall to give him the money.  
“Besides, I don't get paid until next week so I'd rather you get yourself something.”  
“That still doesn't answer my question, though. Why not include me? Your husband?”  
“Marcia and her sister Sonia just want me over. They would rather have me there instead of you and me.”  
“Why?”  
“I—I don't know. Neither of them will tell me.”  
“Best friends in the whole world and they won't tell you why they don't me at their house?”  
“I'd rather not talk about it.”  
“No, you have to tell me—”  
Mia was about to turn away from him when he grabbed her by the hair and yanked back. She shrieked out in pain.  
“Oh, come on! I barely touched you! Come on, tell me!”  
“Let go of me! LET GO OF ME!”  
Mia thrashed her arms about, and slapped him in the face with her left hand. He loosened his grip which allowed her to escape from him. She grabbed her coat and her purse off of the hooks and rushed out the door back out to the street. She reached the pavement when she realized she had left her car at the bakery.  
“Mia!” shouted Wayne from the front door. “Mia, come back!”  
“Why did you pull my hair?” she demanded.  
“I didn't mean to! Okay, come back inside and I'll make it up to you. Besides, your car's not here—I'll drive you back to the bakery for it right now. Okay, I didn't mean to do yank on your hair like that. Please? It's cold out here and I know you're cold just by looking at you.”  
Mia fumed at him from the sidewalk, but after a minute or so, she sighed through her nose and returned to the front step of the house. Before stepping back inside, she thought back to Lars on the seat next to her; how she wanted to be next to him again. I’ll be at his side again, she thought to herself as Wayne put an arm around her before he shut the door.


	2. Chapter 2

She kept picturing Lars next to her in bed, underneath all the soft warm blankets, and laying flat on his back without a shirt and with every piece of his hair fanned out over the pillow. She rolled over onto her other side to set a hand on his warm bare chest; she stroked the fine dark sprigs of hair sprouting up from his chest before she moved down to his svelte slim stomach and to his navel. Before reaching the top of his pajama bottoms, she laid a little kiss on the side of his neck and then another right next to his Adam's apple followed by a third under his chin. He rolled his head over to show her his lips, both of which were a bright red, and parted by just a hair, but he kept his eyes closed.  
Mia kissed him again on the neck and he groaned inside of his throat.  
“Good morning, gorgeous,” she whispered into his ear. He breathed something out to her.  
“What'd you say?” she asked him in a light voice.  
“God morgen, min søde—that's 'good morning, my sweet.'”  
“I see, baby boy. How's your stomach? Are you up for breakfast?”  
“I—I don't know.”  
“What do you mean, you don't know?” she teased him. He groaned again inside of his throat. She kept her hand over his stomach, which still felt firm, still full from the night before, and now his skin never looked softer and sweeter to her.  
“Let me—Let me—just—taste you—” she whispered into his ear; the tip of her tongue slipped into the little crevices of his ear before she kissed him on the side of the face. He rolled his head over again, this time away from her; she ran the tip of her tongue down his face before pressing her lips to his.  
“Wha—What are you—”  
His eyes cracked open as she slipped her tongue into his mouth. Mia hung there for a few seconds before she let go of him.  
“Oh, I see,” he breathed out. “I want to know why—” She pressed her finger to his lips, silencing him.  
“Don't say a word,” she whispered to him. “Don't say a word, baby.”  
Mia tilted her head to the side to kiss the under side of his jaw again. She then slid down under the covers onto his chest and pressed her lips to his right nipple; he shifted his weight underneath her as she spread her kisses to the warm skin all around his nipple and towards the center of his chest, right above his heart. Lars groaned and tilted his head back. She had him between the warmth of the covers and the feel of her lips over his chest.  
She ran her fingers down the curvature of his stomach all the way down to his navel; she caressed all those little sprigs of hair growing around his navel and down towards the band of his pajama bottoms. She had the inclination to climb out of bed and search for the rope to tie him down to the mattress, and then run into the kitchen to make him breakfast. She wanted to feed him, to insert the fork into his mouth with each piece of food, but she had her lips pressed to that firm, full spot right there that was his stomach; the rest of the room was also far too cold to even consider climbing out of bed.  
She reached that little stripe of smooth opaque skin right underneath his navel and above the waist band of his pajamas. She kissed his skin once, twice, four times: she opened her lips a bit to nibble on his skin a bit. She then drew her lips back from the spot and sucked on his skin. She kissed that spot again, thus leaving behind a hickey. Mia eyed the waist band and touched his skin with the utmost tips of her fingers.  
“Don't—” he groaned out, his voice stifled by her constant touches. “Don't—Don't even—”  
But it was too late: she already tugged down on the waist band and pressed her lips to that delicate skin right above his hip bone.  
“Don't—” he sputtered again as she moved further down below his waist. “Don't—Don't—oh—ohhhh—oh, yes—yes, darling—ja, skat—right—right there—yes—yes—ja—please—behage—”

Mia's eyes shot open. She awoke to find herself back in the same bed and surrounded by total darkness. She rolled part of the way onto her back to see Wayne laying behind her and facing the other way. He had replaced Lars and his snores filled the whole room in turn.  
She let out an exasperated sigh as she rolled all the over onto her back. It was just a dream, albeit a rather interesting dream. She could still picture Lars right underneath her, and her pushing him right out for a moment before coming right back for a second taste. She could still feel his chest hair on the tips of her fingers, and the feel of his warm skin against her lips. It felt real and clear as if it happened right there before her.  
She pushed herself up onto her elbows to check the time on the little desk clock on the nightstand: in the dim light, she could see it read four thirty in the morning. The throes of waking up early in the morning, but in a flash of memory, she remembered it was her day off from both of her jobs. She also remembered that in twelve hours time, she would be at Marcia and Sonia's house with him for dinner.  
She lay back down, flat on her back on the bed; every time she closed her eyes, she pictured Lars right beneath her, again and again, his body soft and warm to the touch.  
She rolled her head to the side right as Wayne let out a loud snore once again. Mia winced at the sound of it, but she retracted that motion almost as fast as she did it. But then again, she felt it inside of her, with every return of that image, that image of Lars being underneath her, giving himself and his lovely body to her. Wayne's snores became a wall of noise next to her; she reached up to touch the side of her head, that same spot where he had grabbed a handful of her hair earlier. She pictured Lars next to her; those cherry lips, her mouth on his nipple and his chest, that soft delicate skin below his waist. The thought of it all circled about inside of her mind until it all trickled down her spine towards her hips and into that delicate nothing right between her legs. She pictured him running his tongue inside of there: every lick, every caress, sent shivers up inside of her.  
She need not run her fingers in that space between her legs or on her breasts should Wayne wake up in the middle of the night.  
But that feeling, that spark, glimmered inside of her and spoke to her in a hushed voice. A voice so soft she had to listen to it over and over again in order for her to realize it was her own voice speaking to her from the deepest crevice of her mind, “go with him. Leave this fat pig and go with that sexy Danish man.”  
At about six o'clock in the morning, after she had rolled out of bed and crept down the hall to the cold bathroom in nothing more than a T-shirt and a skimpy piece of cloth over her crotch and her butt, Mia still could not shake that dream from her mind.  
He was still there, still groaning her ear, and she could still feel him under the tips of her fingers, and she could still feel him under her tongue. That was all she could think of as she sat there with her bare legs on the cold porcelain and the goose skin running all over her body.  
Once she had cleaned up, she pulled her underwear back over her hips and then washed her hands. She gazed on at her own reflection and wondered how Lars was doing that morning. She pictured him laying on his side, nestled down in his hotel bed with his hair over his face and with the heater turned on to a considerable level during this chilly November morning. She imagined herself laying behind him with her arms around his waist and her hands stroking his chest.  
While she dried her hands, she imagined herself baking him a whole batch of Puerto Rican donuts and then feeding one to him, one bite at a time until he licked the chocolate off of her fingers and asked her for another one. She pictured herself feeding him donuts until his belly distended out from his body from the full feeling inside of his stomach: careful not to hurt him, she rested him against the wall to make the sweetest of love to him, sweet like those donuts.  
She returned to bed, under those warm blankets, with the thought of Lars beneath her body all the while. Mia bundled a piece of the blankets in between her arms and pretended he lay next to her.  
She stayed under the covers for another hour and a half until the aroma of coffee beckoned her out of bed and towards her dresser in the corner of the room, and slipped on her silky blue pajama bottoms. She padded out of the bedroom at the end of the hall and towards the kitchen, where Wayne already started pouring himself a cup of coffee out of the brewer in the far corner of the room. He turned around, albeit with bit of a struggle, to face her right as she entered the room and rubbed her eyes.  
“I still don't understand why your best friend doesn't want your husband over at dinner tonight,” he told her as part of his morning greeting. She clasped a hand to her face.  
“My God, will you just let it go?”  
“No. I want to know why I can't come over tonight.”  
Mia dropped her hand from her face so as to stare back at him. On one hand, she wanted to tell him the truth about Marcia and Sonia's feelings towards him and add the confession that she was starting to feel for another man. But on the other hand, she knew he would not like either of those sentiments and so she kept up with the lie.  
“Because Sonia thinks you don't like her cooking.”  
He blinked several times at her before taking a swig of coffee from the faded white mug in his right hand.  
“Why would Sonia think that?”  
“Yesterday at work, Marcia told me the last time you and I were there, you kept looking at her funny while she was making dinner, and she added she thinks you don't like it.”  
“Huh. I don't remember doing that. It did give me heartburn, after all. That still seems like an odd reason to not invite me, though.”  
“Look, my friends just don't want you over tonight, alright? I'd rather it be a girl's night anyways—I think Ashley's going to be there. But it's especially after you yanked on my hair last night.”  
“I didn't mean to do that, Mia! I told you!”  
“You still put your hands on me,” she scolded in a curt tone. “You don't put your hands on someone in the heat of the moment.”  
Wayne gulped down the rest of his coffee and, in a wink and a flash of the moment, he hurled the coffee mug at her. She ducked and it missed her head by inches. The mug smashed against the wall behind her, breaking apart into several pieces.  
“Why don't you—” he started, clinching his fat fists.  
“Why don't I what?” she demanded, her body trembling with fear.  
“Why don't you just grow a brain?”  
Mia clasped her hands to her mouth and Wayne retracted when he said that. She then wheeled around and returned down the hall to the bedroom. He lumbered after her.  
“Mia, wait! Wait! I didn't mean to say that!”  
Bullshit, she thought, closing the door behind her. He jiggled the doorknob and she clasped onto it to keep him from coming inside the room: the door locked by a key so she couldn't lock it. She leaned against the door to keep him out when she heard a knock on the panel next to her ear.  
“Mia, open the door,” he called in a muffled voice.  
“I'm getting dressed, Wayne,” she replied tersely.  
“Can I at least come inside?”  
“No.”  
“Mia, please—let me in.”  
“Sorry, Wayne, but no. I like my privacy.”  
Silence emerged from outside the door, which cued her to let go of the doorknob. She took off her shirt and her pajama bottoms, and folded both up before putting them back into her desk drawer. She slipped on one of her favorite bras, a solid black one trimmed with black lace, before putting on a light dusting of her clean smelling deodorant, followed by a white buttoned blouse which hugged the middle of her body, black trousers which accentuated her hips, and black slip ons. She opened the door to find Wayne leaning against the door frame.  
“Did you clean up that mug down the hall?” she asked him.  
“No.”  
“Why?”  
He nibbled on his bottom lip but never said anything. She pressed her hands to her hips.  
“Why?” she repeated. He remained silent; she rolled her eyes and returned to the room to run her smooth red brush with black bristles through her hair.  
“You're going over there now?” he asked her.  
“Yes…” She spoke in between brushes. “They're my best friends… and I'm invited to dinner with them, and after you threw a coffee mug at me for no reason, and broke it, and didn't bother to clean it up, I need to get out of this house for a while.”  
Mia set down her hair brush on top of the dresser when Wayne loomed in front of her as if cornering her against the dresser.  
“What're you—” she stammered, stunned. “What're you doing?”  
His huge body encroached her against the dresser and she tried to duck out from underneath him, but he had her pressed up against the dresser. He huffed and puffed, his breath shortened by both being so enormous in size and by fury; he wagged one of his sausages for fingers in her face.  
“Be back by nine,” he growled.  
She glared at him without lifting her head. If she had her way, she would leave this man and stay with Marcia and Sonia forever, and convince Lars to move to Portland so she could be with him. But she nodded her head in affirmation and he dropped his hand. He stepped out of the way, thus allowing her to escape the room with the brush in her hand to fix her hair in the car. Mia darted down the hall to the front door for her coat, her purse, and her keys, and bolted out of the front door into the crisp morning.  
She arrived at Marcia and Sonia's cute two story brick house about a block from the community college campus on the northeastern side of Portland. She parked at the curb right as a break in the clouds opened and revealed the frigid snow capped elf's hat that was Mount Hood right outside of town.  
Mia climbed out of the car with her coat wrapped around her body and her purse slung over her shoulder, and she strode up to the front step protected from the elements by a black and gray awning, and rang the doorbell. There was silence, and then the door swung open before her and Sonia, a woman with mousy brown curls piled all over her head, greeted her with a warm smile and a big hug.  
“Hey, you're here early! Come on in—”  
Mia entered the cozy foyer lit by warm golden light and hung her purse and her coat on the hooks next to the door. Faint music played out from the kitchen two rooms over from the front door.  
“Also, he's here, too,” added Sonia.  
“Lars is here already?”  
“Indeed I am. Kirk isn't here yet, but I sure am.” Lars strode into the foyer from the corridor behind them with a brownie in one hand and a big glass of clear water in the other. His hair was stringy, damp, and smelled of a faint soapy musk, as if he had just taken a shower, and he wore a black sweat shirt and matching black pants: he padded over the carpet in his bare feet.  
“I was wondering where you were,” he remarked, giving Mia a little kiss hello.  
“I wanted to look nice,” she replied, “I didn't have anything to wear and I also needed a hair brush.”  
“Oh, I see,” he noted with a little twinkle in his eye.  
“There's coffee in the kitchen, by the way, you two,” said Sonia as she strode past them and into the living room and then the kitchen. Lars tossed his hair back from his face.  
“By the way, I should tell you this now while we're ahead—you have good taste.” He flashed Mia sly grin.  
“I have good taste?”  
“Yes. You like me. You have good taste.”  
She chuckled at that.  
“So do you,” she answered.  
He raised his eyebrows and then took a sip of water.  
“Brownie?” he offered.  
“Oh, no, thank you.”  
Mia and Lars strolled into the cozy living room and then the kitchen with black counters and wooden cupboards on all four sides of the room; she entered the room right as “Space Invader” by the Pretenders played out from the speaker next to the entrance. Lars nodded his head as he swallowed down the rest of his brownie and drank up the rest of his water.  
“Quite groovy,” he commented, setting the glass down on the counter next to the disc player. “You know, sometimes, I just want to get up and dance whenever I hear Chrissie Hynde and company…”  
Mia noticed he talked more than the first time they met one another. Perhaps he was more comfortable around her, or it could have been part of her imagination, but either way, it made him stand out more to her.  
Sonia knelt down before the cupboards next to the refrigerator for something; Mia turned to Lars and rushed up next to him. She thought about her fights with Wayne as of late, and the curfew he had imposed on her. She still wanted to forget about him and stay with Marcia and Sonia until she found a place of her own. But she wanted to have fun in between those twelve hours until that time.  
“Can I tell you something?” she asked him in a hushed voice.  
“Of course,” he answered, raising his eyebrows and fluttering his eyelids at her.  
“Can we go in a private place?”  
“Yes.”  
She coaxed him out of the kitchen, and into the living room and the foyer. She led him part of the way down the carpeted hall towards the downstairs bathroom and the stairwell.  
“Well, whatever it is, it must be rather important,” he remarked once she whirled around to face him, “given we are so far from the music and Sonia and—”  
“I want you,” she blurted out, panting from moving at such a quick pace through the house. That whole wing of the house fell silent except for the music in the kitchen.  
“What? What?” he sputtered. She pressed her hands to his shoulders and moved closer to his warm body. Underneath that sweater was his delicate waist and his gentle skin. She was obsessed with his skin and his skin had possessed her, in particular the skin below his chest.  
“What are you doing?”  
“I want you,” she lowered her voice and her left hand down from his upper body.  
“You want—me?”  
His green eyes stared into her hazel ones as she caressed his chest. He wasn't shirtless, but she indeed imagined it.  
“Yes—” she breathed, leaning in towards his lips. She hung there for a second, wanting to kiss him, but she hesitated right there in front of his face. Their eyes locked as she breathed out the next words: “—all to myself—”  
He closed his eyes; she felt his chest relax under the palm of her hand.  
He gave himself to her right there.  
She leaned forward to give him a little kiss on the lips, so smooth and silky to the touch, accompanied with the taste of a chocolate brownie. His chest shuddered underneath her hand.  
“I want you,” she whispered upon pulling back, “I want you, Lars. I want to stuff your big mouth full of food and then run my tongue all over your body like a snake.”  
His eyelids fluttered open and thus she gazed into those green irises, now obscured by massive dilated black holes ready to swallow her whole.  
“Come to me, darling—” his voice croaked out. “Right here—in the hallway—”  
“Yes, please—”  
Mia lunged in with all of her kisses on the underside of his chin and his neck; the palms of his hands crept around her hips and onto the curvature of her butt. His fingers touched the backs of her thighs before returning to her lower back. He slid down the wall onto the carpet, and then onto his back, and she followed him down until she was on top of him.  
“Space Invaders” played again, this time a bit louder, as Sonia did something in the kitchen; Mia and Lars made love in the hall at the base of the stairs to the rhythms of the music. She dug into his own rhythms as they rolled onto their side.  
He unbuttoned her shirt and unhooked her bra, and she began to peel off his jeans when Sonia stepped into the hall to tell them breakfast was ready, and laughed out loud.


	3. Chapter 3

Even after she put her clothes back on, Mia stayed close to Lars for the entirety of the day. She lingered behind him with her hand remaining about a few inches from the bottom of his sweater as they strode into the kitchen, where Marcia and Sonia had made pancakes and sausage patties. They stayed close together even after Ashley arrived at the house right then.   
During breakfast, while they were all seated at the kitchen table, Mia felt his fingers creep onto her right knee and up her thigh. She shook her head at him and he slid his hand to the side of her knee.  
Ashley, a young woman the same age but with shoulder length wavy reddish hair and a narrow heart shaped face, noticed him touching Mia on the knee at one point and raised an eyebrow at her.  
“Stop—” she finally told him; Lars pressed his free hand to his mouth to stifle his laugh.  
“Is everything alright over here?” asked Ashley.  
“Yeah, he's just—he's just—trying to be all cute,” Mia excused, setting a hand on his hand, which he kept pressed onto the side of her thigh. She nibbled on her bottom lip as he reached for his mug of coffee and took a swig; his hand remained on her leg the whole time he finished his big stack of pancakes. After he took his last bite, he glanced over at Ashley, and then at Marcia and Sonia, and then back to Mia; his fingers slithered down the front of her knee, which forced her to jerk her leg away from him and nearly kicking Sonia in the process.  
“Stop—!” she pled to him, chuckling.  
“What are you doing to her?” demanded Marcia.  
“Nothing,” he quipped, jerking his hand back from Mia's thigh. Sonia giggled at him; meanwhile, Mia felt her face growing warm. She took another sip of coffee which did nothing to help the growing bloom of heat in her face. Lars set down his fork on the table before he leaned back with his hands on the edges of the seat and his eyes closed part of the way.  
“Had enough?” asked Marcia, taking one more bite of pancakes before wiping her mouth with the napkin.  
“Oh yes—feels so good—and before I forget, I saw that bottle of vodka in the refrigerator earlier. Would there happen to be a bit of orange juice in there, too?”  
“Orange juice? I don't think we do,” confessed Sonia. “Why—you want a screw driver?” She smirked at him.  
Lars licked his lips before glancing over at Mia and Ashley for a moment.  
“Maybe,” he replied, rubbing his thigh, “or maybe because we are having a little party tonight, we should do something about that bottle in there.”  
“We will, don't you worry,” Marcia assured him, picking up her and Sonia's empty plates and heading towards the sink. Ashley tossed her hair back from her face and climbed to her feet. Lars shifted his weight in his seat and groaned inside of his throat. Mia folded her arms over the surface of the table and turned her head to him. He closed his eyes for a moment before leaning forward to come face to face with her. The pancakes had dried out his lips a bit, but they still remained that lovely bright pink; he lingered closer to her face as if he was about to kiss her, but she put a hand up to his mouth.  
“No—not here—” she whispered. “—at least not in front of my friends—”  
“Hey, Sonia caught us making out in the hallway,” he pointed out, “—I believe touching your knee and getting close to you is the least of either of our problems.”  
“But what about Ashley?”  
They both turned to see her standing at the sink next to Marcia.  
“As far as she knows, you and I are friends with each other,” he assured her. Mia turned to look at him in the eye: it was almost as if heavy amounts of food, and in particular food like pancakes and pastries, made him physically weak. His eyelids drooped as a warm pinkish blush crossed over his face. He rested his chin on his hand.  
“As far as she knows,” she repeated.  
“Mm-hmm—”  
Mia flashed back on her dream with him the night before. Perhaps it would come true at some point, and she would have him laying on his back in his pajamas, and she would make the sweetest of love towards him.  
“Hang tight, darling, I need to use the little boys' room—” he excused him, sliding out of the chair and ducking out of the kitchen. The space left behind in his chair was enough to force Mia out of her chair to help out with cleaning up the kitchen for a bit. Marcia told her that Kirk could show up at the house at any given moment so it would be best to keep an eye for him at the front door. Lars emerged from the downstairs bathroom with his long tendrils of hair flowing behind his head: Mia watched him as he came closer to her at the entrance of the living room.

Marcia and Sonia soon stepped out of the house to go to town, thus leaving Mia alone in the living room with Lars and Ashley. She took a seat on the plush love seat next to the fire place while he saw Marcia and Sonia off, and Ashley excused herself from the room to call someone. It was Lars at the entrance of the living room and Mia on the edge of the couch opposite him.  
“Have you come to seduce me?” she asked him.  
“I should ask you the same thing,” he replied, running his fingers through his hair. She gestured for him to join her on the love seat.  
“Have a seat,” she beckoned him. He pressed a hand to his mouth before he ambled towards the love seat and plopped down on the floor in front her left shin.  
“On the couch!” she insisted.  
“Nah, I'm good here.” He tilted his head back to look at her upside down; the tips of his bangs kissed his thick eyebrows for a second before they began sliding back towards the crown of his head. His deep eyes appeared deeper from the shadows around his brow.  
“You're like a little goblin when you do that,” she remarked.  
“A goblin? You meant 'gremlin.'”  
“No, I mean goblin.” Her hand slithered down the side of his neck and under the collar of his shirt; the tips of her fingers stroked his collar bone and the smooth skin at the top of his chest. He tilted his head forward a bit and then he leaned back against her knee as she stroked him over and over again. She reached down with her other hand so she gave him a massage: pieces of his hair cascaded onto the backs of her hands as she rubbed his shoulders under the collar of his shirt.  
His slender legs spread apart and away from his body as she firmed her caress. He groaned in his throat again as he pressed a hand to his stomach.  
“Does feeling full make you weak?” she whispered into his ear.  
“Unless I am drumming directly afterwards, yes. There's something about it that feels like I'm back home again. It makes me feel all soft and gentle inside, like I'm back in my mom's arms again.”  
She closed her eyes and thought of her mother at the sound of that. All of those times of cooking and baking together in the kitchen back home returned to her memory. All the times she felt better after dinner on all the cold nights and all the times she felt better after a difficult day at school; they all came back to her right at that moment.  
“Do you love your mom?” she whispered.  
“Dearly,” he replied, shifting his weight.  
“Do you still feel full?”  
“So much. I'm surprised I'm still so thin.”  
“Do you have any idea how much I want you right now?”  
“Probably.” He tilted his head back again to show her his opened eyes and parted lips.  
“Let me taste those lips,” she told him in a near whisper, leaning forward to kiss him, even as he hung there upside down before her.  
“I've got all the flavor you need, darling,” he whispered before she kissed him, upside down. All the little groans and moans from the inside of his throat were enough for Mia to kiss him several times. He shifted his weight again and shuffled his feet by the fifth kiss; by the tenth, she lifted up to hold his face and gaze into his eyes upside down.  
“You're so—” she breathed out.  
“I'm so what?”  
“Physical.”  
The sound of a throat being cleared caught their attention. They peered over at the doorway to find Ashley standing there with the handheld phone in her right hand.  
“Sonia just called from the market,” she announced as a devilish smile crept over her face. “They saw Kirk there and he's on his way here.”  
“Oh, boy,” Lars declared, scrambling to his bare feet and scurrying out of the room into the kitchen. Ashley watched him out and chuckled. Mia, whose face flushed, unbuttoned her blouse a bit to cool off.  
“Just out of curiosity, how long have you been standing there?”  
“About a minute,” said Ashley. “I saw you holding his face and staring into his eyes but that was enough—”  
“Ash, don't get the wrong idea.”  
“No, no, I get it,” she persisted. Ashley took a glimpse behind the love seat to see if Lars had gone into the kitchen or somewhere else in the house. She returned to Mia and took a seat next to her on the soft cushion. “I totally get it, Mia. He's a little stranger, a little hot man, compared to your current big oaf of a husband—no offense. I mean, look at the difference. Wayne's selfish and lazy; he's tender and has enough energy in his body to power the entirety of Portland. Wayne's a slob and looks like every other poor bastard right now; he's foreign and exotic. You want something else, a change of pace—”  
“Wayne's also violent, too,” Mia added, fixing her dark hair. “And angry.”  
“—someone who actually loves you for you, and not your dual paychecks.”  
“But Wayne's such a source of comfort, though. We both own that house, too. I can't really leave because I signed my name on the deal.”  
“Could you go to your parents' house? I'm sure they'd love to take care of you until you get your own place again.”  
“Not a chance. They've saved for retirement for themselves—I just can't barge in like that.”  
“Don't buy into his supposed 'source of comfort', either. Remember how stressed you were when you were trying to get that job at the salon? Did he, at all, vouch for something for himself?”  
“No, now that I remember correctly.”  
“Alright then. He's not your comfort beacon. Lars is.”  
“But Lars is leaving in a week. They're going to Seattle.”  
“Get his number. On his days off, hit him up. But until then, make the most of his heart and his body while he's here.”  
“I think I'll bake him a cake. I'll tell Marsh when they get back.”  
“There you go! Keep getting into his stomach. Now, where'd he go? I told him his guitarist is coming and he just leaves the room…”  
They had found that Lars had wandered upstairs, much to Mia and Ashley's curiosity. When they reached the second level, he was poking his head into a linen closet down the hall.  
“There you are,” stated Ashley.  
“Here I am,” he echoed, sliding the white wooden door closed and cramming his hands into his pockets. “Do you have any tissues?”  
“Uh, yeah, in that closet there,” she gestured at the sliding double doors. “I'm going to see if Marcia, Sonia, and Kirk showed up.” Ashley doubled back down the stairs; once she was out of sight, Lars slid open the closet door again. Mia mosied towards him with a look of concern upon her face.  
“Is everything okay?” she asked him.  
“Yeah, I just—I just—”  
“What?”  
“—needed to blow my nose.” He took out a tissue from the little white box on the third shelf and rubbed the tip of his nose with it. Mia nodded her head but she wasn't too sure about that.  
“So tell me about Ashley and Sonia,” he began in a muffled voice, “because I know Marcia is at your bakery, but what about the two of them, though?”  
“Well, they're both at the college because they live so close by,” she explained, folding her arms over her chest, “Ashley does theatre and Sonia does art.”  
“Sonia does art, really?”  
“Yeah.” She showed him a sly little grin. “Are you an art guy?”  
“Big time. The world we live in would not be as lovely without it.”  
“When she comes back to the house, I'll try and get her to show you some of her sketches and stuff.”  
“Show me her inner tortured soul, darling.”  
The sound of the front door closing caught the attention of the both of them.  
“They're back!” Mia told him in a hushed voice; he wadded up the tissue and crammed it into his trouser pocket before he followed her back downstairs. They both walked at a brisk pace down the corridor to the front of the house to meet up with Ashley, Marcia, Sonia, and Kirk. He was a little bit taller than the three of them and beheld a head full of thick, pitch black curls down past his shoulder blades; he had a squarish face, a straight nose, and a little stripe of a mustache over his upper lip.  
“Ah, there they are,” he declared as part of his greeting to Mia and Lars; he turned to her with a little devilish grin. “And the infamous Mia—” He turned to Marcia and Sonia. “What'd you guys say your last name was?”  
“Didn't. It's Panadera,” replied Sonia, sort of telling the truth. Panadera was Mia's maiden name while Marcia and Sonia's last name was Gray.  
“Panadera! Anyways, I'm Kirk Hammett and I see you ladies already met Lars. Let's get this party started.”  
The six of them huddled in the living room for most of the afternoon, playing Dungeons and Dragons and with drinks in their hands the whole time: Kirk and Lars had glasses of straight tequila, while the four girls each had daquiris. A few times Kirk and Lars stood to their feet and danced with each other for no reason in particular. By the time the sun went down, Ashley and Sonia stepped into the kitchen to make dinner. Marcia and Kirk knelt down on the floor opposite each other, while Mia and Lars stayed on the love seat next to the fire place. He kicked back the rest of his glass and turned to her.  
“Penny for your thoughts?” she asked him over Marcia and Kirk's tipsy giggling.  
“I'm just sitting here, trying not to be unhappy,” he told her in a low voice and flashed her a little smile. He leaned his head back against the love seat cushion. “I'm so hungry.”  
“I am, too. And it smells so delicious.”  
“I know. It's killing me. I'm about ready to go into the kitchen and just eat everything in there. And this glass only did so much…”  
“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia—” Kirk chanted.  
“Can I call you Kirky?” she asked him, hiccuping a bit.  
“As long as I can call you by your name,” he replied, setting down his glass on the hearth. He beckoned for her to come forth and she ended up giggling instead.  
“Dinner's ready!” Ashley called from the kitchen.  
“Oh, boy—” Lars shot up to his feet and Mia followed him with her empty glass in hand. Ashley and Sonia had made homemade pizza with hand rolled dough and grated mozzarella cheese. The six of them made a conga line up to the two pizzas on the counter with their plates in hand. It was bit difficult because each of them had had a drink, but Mia and Lars returned to their seats on the love seat, while Ashley and Sonia sat down on the hearth. Marcia and Kirk, both of whom were tipsy from one too many drinks, were the only ones in the whole room making a ton of noise with their laughter. Ashley and Sonia would crack a joke of some sort and the room would soar into noisiness. This went on for about an hour, after they each took multiple slices; Lars and Marcia both had the most, with four. A warm blush bloomed over his round face as he grew warmer and warmer to the touch; instead of laughing out loud, he would take a few bites and proceed to giggle with his mouth full.  
“Careful, I don't wanna have to put my arms around you and do the Heimlich maneuver on you,” Mia warned. He flashed a puzzled expression.  
“You don't want to put your arms around my belly?” he asked her. The whole room fell silent, all five of them staring at Mia in shock and awe.  
“Mia and Lars, I totally see the two of them together!” Sonia exclaimed after swallowing a bite of pizza.  
“Oh, yeah, I can totally see her putting her arms around his belly when he's all full and can barely move,” Ashley said with a wink.  
“Hey, we should play spin the bottle!” suggested Marcia.  
“We don't have a bottle to spin, though,” Kirk pointed out.  
“Spin the glass?” she corrected herself.  
“Spin the Kirk!” Lars declared and they all erupted in laughter. Mia then gasped when she remembered the curfew Wayne had set for her. She dreaded the thought of him doing something to her if she was even a minute late.  
“I—I really gotta get going,” she sputtered, finishing her third slice of pizza.  
“Where are you going?” Lars asked with his mouth full. Mia was about to tell him about Wayne when she stopped herself. She had to think of something as he was gazing on at her with those big green eyes.  
“I have to—be at Smell the Magic.”  
“At eight thirty at night on a Friday?”  
“Yes! Yes!” she declared, picking up her plate. “Sometimes I like to sleep there so I'm the first one there.”  
Lars threw a glance over at Kirk for a moment; neither of them were sure of what to think about that.  
“She really does,” Marcia sputtered. “She's such a—work horse.”  
“That's,” Lars started, reluctant; he swallowed down his bite so he could talk better; “a—strange way of going about, but sounds reasonable. And legitimate. I mean, your job is your job after all. Shall we meet up with you tomorrow?”  
“Of course! You two guys are always welcome to stop by whenever you want for a pastry or a donut. Or two things. Or several things.”  
“Or several?” Kirk chuckled at that. Lars raised his eyebrows at that. Mia then stepped out of the room into the kitchen to rinse off her plate and put it into the drainer. He followed her in for a fifth slice of pizza and when she wheeled around to face him, she threw her arms around him. She closed her eyes to accentuate the feeling.  
Mia could feel him getting full with that warm, firm feeling in the pit of his stomach. He rested his chin on her shoulder and made a light little groan inside his throat as she held him close to her. The clean smell from the waves of his hair tickled her nose; she didn't want to let go of him. Mia returned to the living room to give everyone a hug; Ashley set down her plate on the hearth next to Sonia.  
“Be careful,” she whispered in a voice so light she may as well have breathed it into Mia's ear.  
She grabbed her coat, her hair brush, and her keys as she headed out the door to the cold night; she stared up at the black starless sky and shivered at the damp wind against the skin on her face. She climbed into her car and wound back towards the southern end of town and the little white and blue house. Even after she parked in the driveway and switched off the engine, Mia remained there in the driver's seat with the keys in the palm of her hand; she rested her hand on the top of her thigh.  
She closed her eyes and thought of Lars right before her. The warmth of his body and the aroma of his hair hung fresh in her memory: she wanted to feel him against her finger tips again. She knew he was going to bed with that soft feeling inside of him, and she wanted to lay next to him to feel it inside of him. His skin possessed her, and now his stomach had done the same. She wanted to be close to him, to run away with him and his band, and to, for the most part, get away from Wayne.  
But she sighed through her nose and then opened the car door. She stepped out to the cold and headed up to the front step, only to be greeted by Wayne lumbering down the hall towards her from their bedroom. She had closed the door when he greeted her with a balled fat fist. He punched her in the forehead, and the blow of it threw her against the door.  
“Five minutes late!” he bellowed. “And look what you made me do!”  
He opened his hand and slapped her across the face twice before forcing her up to her feet. He sniffed her neck and showed her a sneer.  
“You smell like cologne, pizza, and booze,” he growled in her face; he tightened his grip on her wrist all the while. “Are you screwing someone on the side?”  
“No!” she shouted, struggling to break free from him.  
“I'll let you go when you tell me why you didn't leave me any money for dinner.”  
“What? I thought I gave you money!”  
“You didn't. Now make me dinner.”  
She sighed, exasperated. “Fine. What do you want?”  
“I want what you had.”  
“Pizza? Okay, fine. I'll order out—just—you're hurting me—”  
He let go of her wrist; she clenched it and brought it to her chest in pain. Her forehead and right cheek both throbbed from him hitting her. She wanted to run back to Marcia and Sonia's house but it was too late: Wayne forced her onto the phone and gave up ten dollars for a large pepperoni. She turned in as soon as it arrived at their front step because she had to be at Smell the Magic early again, and she also wanted to be alone as long as the thought of Lars was still as fresh as the smell from that cardboard box.  
Early the next morning, she awoke to a large reddened bump on her forehead right above her right eye and a bruise on her cheek. She thought of calling out sick in order to heal but that meant staying home with him.  
She opened the bakery at four o'clock to start on her Puerto Rican donuts and the raspberry danishes, the latter of which made her think of Lars. The raspberry filling smelled as sweet as his hair and the dough felt as warm as his body. Soon the whole building filled with the sweet aroma of fresh donuts, danishes, brownies, blondies, and all manner of cakes and pastries. She thought of that gentle warmth inside of his stomach and wanted to lay her lips on it.  
At the first rays of sunrise through the broken rain clouds surrounding the eastern side of town and Mount Hood, the glass front door swung open and he strode into the bakery, once again in his black coat and his long hair brushed and still smelling sweet. He gasped when he spotted the bruise and the bump on her face.  
“Good Lord, what happened to you?” he demanded, gaping at her.  
“…I tripped.”  
“You tripped? That must have been a hell of a fall, holy sh—Jesus.”  
“Yeah, it was—pretty bad. I'm surprised I just got this bump and this bruise.”  
“JESUS.”  
He glanced out the door to see if anyone was headed inside the bakery.  
“Do you have a minute?”  
“Yeah—I have several minutes, actually. I was just about to go on break when you walked in.”  
He pursed his lips together before leaning over the counter next to the register. Mia could tell he had woken up a brief time before as his eyelids drooped a bit.  
“You know, when I hugged you last night, it felt so good getting so close to you and with my stomach all full and everything. And you know, I usually fall for women much taller than me because I see it as a sign of status, but—”  
He hesitated, gazing up at her bruised, battered face.  
“You liked it,” she began with reluctance, “when you put your chin on my shoulder, didn't you?”  
“I want you to come with us to Seattle and Canada next week,” he blurted out. “I can get you backstage with the four of us. Kirk loves you, and I am positive James and Jason will love you, too. But I want to get next to you. I want to get so much closer to you.”  
Mia sighed, and peered about the room as the first rays of the new day entered through the glass windows: the crown of his head glowed in the golden sunlight. She thought about the bakery and also Curl Up and Dye. She had just landed these two jobs and now she was asked to leave them.  
A thought crossed her mind, a thought that told her there was the possibility of Wayne tracking them down in Seattle and Canada and doing something drastic to them. She need not risk it when that was there; she gazed into those eyes which stared back at her from under a dark shadow beginning to cast over his full face.  
“I'm so sorry, but I can't, as much as I want to. I just—I'm swamped.”  
He closed his eyes and bowed his head. She clasped her hands to either side of his face: his skin felt like smooth butter.  
“Hey. It's okay. What's your number, though? I'll call you.”  
He lifted his head and raised his eyebrows from behind his bangs.  
“You will?”  
“Yeah. Every day if you would like. I can offer you my tongue if you want.”  
He fluttered his eyelids at her and showed her a sweet little smile. Lars loomed before her face.  
“How about if I offer you my tongue right now?”  
“You know I would love it, but there's a couple of people coming.”  
He turned his head a bit to see two men crossing the street towards the bakery.  
“Meet me in the back room later today at eleven?” she suggested.  
“Okay, darling,” he whispered. “I'll take two of those lovely donuts, by the way. Yes, they're both for me.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Okay—so Marcia has no clue about anything happening back here, right?” he asked her through the short opening in the back door.  
“I hope not,” answered Mia. It was fifteen minutes shy of noon: she had clocked out for the day and swiped two spare donuts and a blondie in sleeves of blue tissue paper, and stuffed both into her purse. She then ducked into the back room of the bakery, a tiny room with smooth walls crammed full with cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other in every corner. Lars had arrived within a few minutes of her signing out and handing the reins over to Marcia for her shift. While he was talking to her, and she coaxed the words out of him, Mia ran down the street to the little Italian restaurant down the street for two take out boxes of linguine, one for herself and a much larger one for him. She wanted him to eat all of the food she gave him, not until he was full, but every piece of food that lay before him. She wanted him to feel so full that it would seal his mouth shut and she could have her way.  
After the previous night, she wanted to be close to him even if it was for an hour, as long as it kept her away from Wayne for a while.  
Lars had found a pair of large square boxes right next to the back door and dragged them away from the wall to make a little hiding place for himself with room for his legs, by the time she knocked on the door to catch his attention.  
She crept inside the back room, careful not to make any noise closing the door behind her. He stripped off his coat to reveal his button down shirt, opened to expose his slender neck and his collar bones; he folded up his coat before laying it down on top of a low box close to the back door so it was out of sight. She handed him his box and a fork, and he took his seat with his back against the wall.  
Mia nestled up next to him as he stretched out his legs. He smiled at the massive heap of pasta with tomato sauce and zucchini laying before him in his lap and then picked up his fork. Before he could say anything, she opened her purse and lay the donuts and the blondie in the lid on his knees and he pressed a hand to his chest as if he was in love.  
“So, how was your morning?” he asked her as he made his first twirl.  
“Kinda slow… like how I'm going to eat this pasta before me because it's just that good. When are you guys playing?”  
“Er—tomorrow night. Eight o'clock at the Rose Quarter. It's the same time the night afterwards, and if you get in ahead of time, you can get all manner of free stuff like bracelets, pendants, shirts, couches, cars, microwave ovens—”  
“A piece of your hair?”  
“A piece of my hair, too. Courtesy of our record company. This is too good, by the way.”  
She noticed he had only twirled his fork a second time.  
“Eat, eat—you're skin and bones. Stuff your gullet and fill your tummy.”  
“I'm eating, I'm eating—” He shoveled the big bite of linguine into his mouth, followed by even more. They fell into silence for a few minutes before he spoke up again after eating down half of his pasta.  
“By the way, how is your face feeling?”  
“A little better. It's still sort of achy because it's bruised, and I was outside for a little bit.”  
“It will heal, though.”  
“It will indeed heal.”  
He reached three quarters of the way down inside of his box and when he rested his hand on top of his thigh. Mia glanced over at him and the right side profile of his face: she paid close attention to the little double underneath his chin and then his full cheek bone, his nose, and his deep set eye under his feathery bangs. He closed his eyes and sighed through his nose. The way he relaxed right there next to her made her think of her dream.  
“Getting full?”  
“Very much so, yes. By the way, I should tell you… looking at these you sure have got a way around this bakery here.”  
“Well, yeah. This place pretty much saved me.” She took a few more bites of pasta; she was almost done herself.  
“Really?”  
“Oh, yeah. Baking, making any kind of food—it's just what I do best.”  
“You've got that salon, too.”  
“I do, yeah. And since the show's tomorrow—and I have work, then, too—how about you four guys drop on by and I'll style your hair for each of you.”  
“You would do that for us?”  
“Of course. I'll tell my boss that four rock n' roll boys are coming by and I'll try and convince her that it's on us.”  
He showed her a sweet little smile, complete with his cheek bones filling out, and continued to eat his pasta. A few more good bites were left at the bottom of the box along with the donuts and the blondie as he set down his fork on the side and groaned inside of his throat.  
“I—I can't—”  
“Can't eat any more?”  
“No—my eyes were bigger.” He rested a hand on his stomach; Mia showed him a little smirk once she finished her pasta and rested her hand on his for a second before she dropped down to feel the warmth radiating from inside of him.  
“I think you've got a little more room in there.”  
“I don't think I do.”  
“Really? There's a little give in there.”  
Lars winced at her words but she leaned forward to bring her face closer to him. He licked his lips and held still as she hung there next to the side of his head: she stared straight into his eyes and breathed out her next words.  
“Eat all of it—and I will give you a little something else.”  
He fluttered his eyelashes at her and sighed through his nose. He picked up his fork and finished the rest at the bottom of the box. She gazed at his face from the side once again as he swallowed the last bite, which made his throat swell out a bit. He sighed again and reached for one of the donuts. Mia knew he was getting very full but watched him eat up the two pastries she had picked out for him. He swallowed down the blondie with his eyes closed. His mouth still full, he tilted his head back against the wall. She snuggled closer to him and watched his throat swell as he gulped it down.  
“Oh, man… oh…”  
Mia picked up the empty box and took it off of his lap. His legs lay stretched out before his body; she climbed onto her knees and unfastened the button on his shirt closest to the top of his jeans, followed by the other three buttons. She then unbuttoned his jeans so she exposed his belly, now every so slightly round from all that food inside of him. She had him in the right spot; she ran her finger over the fine dark hair around his navel before she leaned forward and pressed her lips to a spot next to it. He was warm and firm to the touch.  
“Yeah, I'd say you've had enough. You're literally bursting at the seams.” She stroked the smooth skin next to the hair running up from his belly button to his chest. He belched inside of his throat and then let out a low groan. He shifted his weight before tilting his head back even more, showing her his Adam's apple.  
“Come here. Come here, you sexy hairy little man—I want you—”  
“I almost—I can't move—I'm too full—” he groaned, keeping his eyes shut.  
“You're perfect—you are right where I want you—”  
The tips of her fingers caressed against his bare skin like the tips of feathers. She pressed her lips to his mouth; his chest heaved but he didn't move the whole time she kissed him and massaged his belly. At one point, she tugged on the sides of his jeans to expose his pelvic bones, and then placed her right knee on his other side so she straddled the middle of his body. She was careful not to lay on top of him but that didn't stop her from making out with him.  
Soon she peeled off his jeans and reached down his underwear and fondled him.  
He gave himself to her right there in the back room of Smell the Magic and she could care less about Wayne at that point, especially once Mia stripped off her jeans and her shirt so she was down to her beige satin bra and her white panties for him.  
Her fingers ran down the top of Lars' slender, sinewy bare thigh, and then back up towards his hip. She stroked him again until he lay flat on his back with his shirt fully opened up and off of his body part of the way. His nipples had pointed out from underneath their little clusters of hair, much to her pleasure. Tendrils of hair spread over his face and onto his collar bone. Using the backs of her fingers, she pushed the hair off of him to expose his bare skin. She knelt over his body and bowed her head over the plumes of hair covering his chest.  
She pressed her lips to his right nipple, and then gave his left one a light pinch. She then ran the tips of her fingers down his chest towards his firm stomach, the tiniest bit round with fullness. Mia tickled him a bit, and his belly seized and his breathing shortened.  
“Please, I need to rest my stomach…” he pleaded, his chest heaving. “—oh—ohhhh—”  
“You're just so right at the moment, though.” She brought her mouth lower to kiss his belly and then his belly button, which caused him to groan again, but the groan this time was much more mellow, as if it truly pleased him.  
“Do you like that, baby?”  
“Oh, yeah—” Lars croaked out. She kissed him again, this time on the plumes of hair right under his navel. He groaned again before rolling his head over with his lips parted so as to let out a low, guttoral moan over the boxes next to them.  
“We can't make so much noise,” she whispered to him.  
“Oh, yeah—Marcia—and all the—the—the people out there—there—”  
She was mere inches from his genitals but it didn't matter to her: she cared more about kissing him right under his belly button than giving him another hand job, although she considered doing that again. Every kiss beckoned a light groan from the inside of his throat, each one more relaxed and delicate than the last.  
Mia lifted herself onto her knees to straddle his bare hips. She reached behind her to unhook her bra and peeled it off of her chest.  
“Hey, babe,” she told him in a low voice. He opened his eyes a bit and then they widened once he recognized her bare breasts poking out from her chest. She lay it on the floor atop her jeans; he lifted his head to take a better look of them. His chest heaved as she dropped herself down into a crawling position. Streams of her dark hair dangled down over his face. He licked his lips as he stared into her eyes.  
“I want to be your mama,” she whispered into his ear. Mia lifted herself up and tugged off her underwear to show him her crotch and her lips, as bright pink as the ones surrounding his gaping mouth.  
“Oh—” he breathed out; his eyes examined her, all delicate like the most intricate of lace. He shook his head. “Please—”  
“You know you want it,” she told him in a low voice.  
“Oh God—”  
“Come here, baby boy,” she breathed. “Come here with your full tummy. Come on to me—”  
He pushed himself up onto his elbows and leaned forward, and his shirt fell down his arms even more. He stared into her eyes as his tongue slithered out of his mouth and onto her skin. She tilted her head back to better feel every lap and every caress of his tongue; he closed his eyes as he licked deeper and deeper into her.  
He did more with his tongue than just speak, as she soon figured out.  
He kept at it for a few moments until he pulled out, licking his lips.  
“Gimme another job,” he sputtered, his chest heaving once again. She reached down and wrapped her fingers around his dick. She stroked his shaft with her thumb and he ejaculated right then.  
“It's getting so hot in this room,” she stammered.  
“Yeah, I'll say,” a voice behind her caught her off guard. She turned her head and he peeked around her hip, and they both spotted Marcia leaning against the side of the open doorway with her arms folded over her chest and a devilish grin upon her face.  
“How—How long were you standing there?” Mia demanded, letting go of him; he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  
“I've been watching the whole time, from the time you started touching him and unbuttoning his shirt. Literally nobody else has come in from the time you clocked out, so—hell of a show you guys put on.” She winked at Mia, who peered down at her hand, the side of which had a bit of his semen.  
“Do you have a paper towel or something—readily—with you?” she asked Marcia.  
“Make that two of them.” Lars held up two fingers.  
“Yeah. I can do anything for the two of you.”  
She disappeared behind the corner for a roll of paper towels; she returned with two in her free hand, and handed them to the both of them. Mia wiped the side of her hand and Lars rubbed down his tip; once she pulled her panties back up over her, she climbed off of him to let him sit in an upright position. She slipped her bra back on and turned to see Marcia still standing in the doorway with the roll of paper towels in hand.  
“Don't say anything, please,” Mia begged her, adjusting her bra straps.  
“Of course. But just as a word of warning: if you guys are going to have a little fun with each other, go somewhere more private. Like, this bakery in the middle of the day is not a good idea. Maybe at night when the place is closed? But that's just my suggestion, though.”  
She disappeared behind the side of the door again, which left Mia and Lars alone in the back room. She returned to him and the puzzled expression on his face.  
“Where's my shirt?”  
“I think you're sitting on it.”


	5. Chapter 5

Lars stood outside the back door of the bakery with his left hand stuffed into his coat pocket and his right hand resting upon his stomach. He turned to see Mia one last time with a crooked smile and a light rosy blush over his face: his cheek bones filled out so they resembled little cherry tomatoes.  
“Shall we do that again?” he asked her.  
“Please,” she answered, showing him a shy little smile. “Do you like pie at all?”  
“Of course. Pie is always good.”  
“We may be starting a new line of pies soon. If you're willing, the first one will be on me and Marcia.”  
He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head forward. She watched him lick his lips: the tip of his tongue slithered out of his mouth as if he still wanted a taste of her.  
“What flavor would you like?” she asked him in a low voice.  
“Apple. Dutch style. Please.”  
“I'll tell her. I'd be more than happy to tickle you with fresh, warm food again.”  
He nibbled on his bottom lip at that.  
“You are—not going to the show tomorrow, are you?”  
“I can't,” she confessed. “As much as I want to. I can't. But like I said, I have a shift tomorrow at the salon, though.”  
“Oh, yeah, that's right. You are going to do our hair for us. I shall tell them when I see them in a little bit. Also—er—if and when you get the chance, I would like to take you out to dinner some time. Perhaps before we go to Seattle and Canada, or you can follow us up there. But for now—” His hand rubbed his stomach. “—I gotta go back to my room and relax. I'll catch you later, honey pie.”  
He wheeled around and ambled back towards the street; Mia watched him all the way around the corner before she slipped back into the bakery. Once she had closed the back door, she pressed her back against the panel and lay a hand to her chest. She had already begun to miss Lars' touch and the soft warmth of his body. She pictured herself laying her head on his bare stomach as they lay in bed and every so slowly make love to one another. Food had turned into a means of connecting with another man and not something to be treated with disrespect.  
She dropped her hand, and stepped away from the door, and returned to the front of the bakery, where Marcia was refilling the tray of raspberry danishes. She chewed on her bottom lip as she knew they weren't a pie bakery.  
“Marcia?”  
“Yes?” She lifted her head once she aligned the tray inside the display.  
“Would it be much trouble if we could bake a couple of pies for Lars and his band tomorrow?”  
“Tomorrow?! Do you have any idea how slammed we'd be and screwed you are?”  
“Why is that?”  
“Well, Mia, first of all, we've got to get the ingredients for pie, which we don't have. Second, what's Sandra going to think of this? I'd have to call her up and get her permission for it. Worst case scenario is we'd have to get her ass up here from Wilsonville so she can okay it. Besides, we're not a pie place. If people want pies, they go over to Marie Callendar's.”  
“Come on, I promised Lars there'd be pie when I style his and his bandmates' hair tomorrow.”  
Marcia pressed her hands to her hips and then let out an exasperated sigh. She pursed her lips together; Mia meanwhile slung her purse over her shoulder. She knew she had said too much and she had done too much by making love with him in that back room there.  
“I can get whatever stuff we need out of my pocket,” she suggested. “I can bring them back and then boogie back home.”  
“And I call her up all the while—alright. We'll do it. But make it quick, though, because I have to fill out a few orders before I clock out for the day.”  
Mia sighed with relief.  
“Oh, God, Marcia, thank you. Thank you so much.”  
“Because I know how unhappy you are living with Wayne. I'll keep your little encounter back there under wraps and I'll do what I can to lie about this. Now, get going and I'll get Sandra on the phone and I'll heat up one of the ovens. We got plenty of flour, eggs, butter, and sugar, but get whatever fruit or something, whatever he asked for. Get a tin, too, because—you know—we don't have any of those.”  
Mia bolted out the front door of the bakery, and headed out to her car at the curb, and drove to the little super market three blocks away. She hurried towards the produce section for a pound of granny Smith apples and bottles of cinnamon, nutmeg, and of course, brown sugar for the crumble atop the pie.  
Once she had paid for it all with money out of her pocket and stepped back outside through the big sliding front doors, she then broke into a run back to her car and returned to Smell the Magic, where Marcia had tied her apron back around her waist. Mia followed her into the other side of the bakery towards the kitchen.  
“Okay, so I just got off the phone with Sandra,” she explained as they strode towards the silvery oven closest to the doorway, “and I added the caveat that it was for a special occasion, and so she was kind enough and she gave it the green light. So this oven's heating up, the mixer's set up on the counter over here—what did Mr. Lars ask for?”  
“He wanted Dutch apple pie,” replied Mia, taking the bag of shiny bright green apples out of the grocery sack. “Yeah, the Danish boy wanted a Dutch pie.”  
“Okay, that's going to take quite a bit of time—an hour at the least. I'll take the stuff and you get your apron back on and we'll get started.”  
Sure enough, it took them both more than an hour, almost two hours to bake one single pie: it would have taken them much less time had Marcia not have to tend to a few customers who walked in after one thirty. Mia did the job of sprinkling the butter and brown sugar crumble atop the pie and slid it into the hot oven.  
“Mia!” Marcia called out from the front of the bakery; she poked her head out of the doorway to see her putting cash into the register.  
“Yes?”  
“I'll take care of the pie. You know, I'll let it bake and then sit out and cool off and then I'll take it over to Curl Up and Dye tomorrow when those boys come to get their hair done.”  
“Oh, thank you, Marcia!” she declared, untying her apron. “I swear, you are honest to God the best friend I could've ever asked for. You and Sonia both.”  
Marcia walked at a brisk pace towards the end of the front display and threw her arms around Mia. Both young women closed their eyes as they hung there for a moment, taking in the burgeoning warm aroma of the pie baking all the while. Marcia then let her go and patted both of her cheeks.  
“Okay, get going, my sweet. Be safe, too.”  
Mia picked up her purse and returned to her car yet again: even though the sky had been blanketed by clouds, the daylight started to give way to royal blue twilight. She had to get home lest Wayne do something.  
She wound through the streets of Portland, back to the south side and the little white and blue house; she pulled into the driveway and, after breathing in deep for a moment, ambled up the walkway to the front step. Wayne stood at the far end of the hallway in a black sweater and baggy jeans; he glared at her and kept his arms folded over his chest.  
“You're late,” he remarked, his tone curt. “Again.”  
“I got hung up at work,” she explained. “There was just a lot to do today. I also got hungry so I bought lunch for Marcia and myself.” She dared not tell him about any kind of pie she and Marcia had baked up, or her appointment with Lars and his band the next day.  
“I got off the phone with my parents. They want us to come over for dinner tonight.”  
“Tonight?”  
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”  
She paused, careful in picking her words.  
“—no.”  
“Why'd you hesitate?”  
“It just—took me by surprise. I didn't know we were going to your parents house tonight. I have to take a shower, and clean up, and change my clothes. All of that is going to take some time so be patient.”  
“Okay but make it quick, though. It's almost four o'clock and I'm starving.”  
Mia hung up her purse and her coat; she peeled off her shirt as she passed him in the hall towards the bathroom for a shower. He stopped her before she took another step further.  
“Where's your ring?” he demanded, gesturing at her left hand.  
“In—my pocket.”  
“Why is it in your pocket?”  
“Because I don't like wearing it when I'm making baked goods.” He fumed at her for a moment but soon let her by. She darted into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, and proceeded to take off her clothes and turn on the shower head. As the water poured over her head and shoulders, she closed her eyes and thought of Lars. She could still feel the soft warm skin beneath his waist on her lips, and the curvature of his tongue inside of her.  
She would have to think of him the whole time she and Wayne were at his parents' house otherwise she would have considered another evening at Marcia and Sonia's house.  
Will and Jen Davidson were an older couple, both of them with silvery tendrils of hair spiraling down from the crowns of their heads and lines beginning to creep over their once young faces. When she first met them, Mia referred to them both as “plain looking” in that she could walk past them in a crowded room and would have to resort to looking twice in order to recognize them. The one distinction going for Jen was her cat eye glasses, which had a pink and green swirled and spotted frame that reminded Mia of splattering paint schemes. Will had also started walking with a cane for the last three years and never told either Wayne or Mia as to why. Both of them wore pale, plain clothes which blended into the eggshell white wall paper of their house.  
When they showed up to the house, and Will greeted them at the front door, Mia wrinkled her nose at the smell of cooking shrimp emerging from the inside of the house behind him.  
“Still allergic?” he asked her in his gravelly voice as part of his greeting.  
“Very much so,” answered Mia, wondering why he would ask her such a thing. “I can't even touch it because it makes my skin break out and get all itchy.”  
They stepped into the lukewarm carpeted front foyer to hang up their coats and she covered her nose to protect the inside of her throat and lungs from any airborne particles of cooked shrimp.  
“I think we have chicken in the freezer,” said Will as he shuffled along the foyer towards the kitchen, where Jen was cooking shrimp in a skillet under a glass lid and a bundle of linguine in a separate metal pot. She turned to see the three of them crowding into the warm, cramped, brightly lit room and cracked them a smile.  
“Ah, I see my boy and his little Latina lady made it!” she greeted in her high pitched scratchy voice. “You're both just in time, too—dinner's about five minutes out. I hope you two are hungry: we're having shrimp scampi.”  
“We have chicken, right?” asked Will.  
Jen hesitated and then gasped as Mia backed out of the kitchen to spare her respiratory system.  
“Oh, I forgot! Mia's allergic to shrimp! I think we do, though—I can put some in the oven real quick right now…”  
Mia stumbled out of the foyer and onto the low gray couch in the dimly lit living room across from the kitchen; she dropped her hand from her mouth and breathed in the air. She never spoke of her allergy much, but she always made a point to bring it up at any odd dinner parties in the case of shellfish being served. She leaned her head back against the top of the couch and gazed up at the ceiling and paid attention to her breathing.  
She just wanted to have dinner and prepare herself for that quadruple appointment at Curl Up and Dye the next day. She thought about Lars and his bandmates: she had already met Kirk, but she wondered about James and Jason. The one thing she knew about them was their love of her Puerto Rican donuts: she thought of the apple pie and if they would like that following their hair stylings.  
Faint whispers in the foyer behind her caught her attention. She dared not turn her head as it could have been a private moment between Will and Jen, or Wayne and Jen, but as she paid closer attention, it sounded like Will and Wayne speaking to one another behind her. She had no idea if they knew she was there eavesdropping upon them, but nevertheless, she started to focus on their words more. They slurred together to the point she could hardly tell what they were saying, and Jen propping a baking sheet of chicken strips into the oven didn't help matters, but she heard her own name and the words “tequila sunrise—and pizza—” under their hushed breaths.  
She tried to decipher what they were saying when the sound of Jen's voice cut through her concentration like a knife.  
“Soup's on!”  
Mia stood to her feet and, through the dim light, she noticed Will and Wayne huddled near the entrance of the living room with their bodies facing her. They had no idea she was there on the couch. They raised their voices to normal speaking voices once she appeared before them.  
“So remember what I said, son,” the former advised out of context.  
“Yeah, of course—”  
Mia dodged past them and into the warm dining room across the hall and next door to the kitchen, and took the seat furthest away from the entrance lest she catch another whiff of shrimp.  
She spent most of the dinner with her index finger covering her nostrils as she ate up her chicken and pasta. Jen asked her if the chicken was cooked all the way through and she told her yes. She watched the three of them converse about as if Wayne had never left high school, but Jen was the sole one who interacted with her the whole two hours. She need not risk speaking up and having those cold eyes across the table penetrate her, much less breathe in more airborne particles of shrimp; those minute bright pink curls glared at her from the linguine in the middle of the table. Even if she wasn't allergic, the very sight of them made her gag. As a result, she felt like an intruder, some strange Hispanic girl imposing on a family dinner and not one time sharing her thoughts about that Danish man.  
After she helped Jen clear the table and wash off the dishes, she and Wayne returned home at nine thirty: when she stepped outside, she took in a deep breath of cold, crisp air to help out her lungs.  
Upon returning to the house, Wayne lifted his hand and pinched his nose at her. She rolled her eyes at the sight, and then hung up her coat and purse before striding down to the bedroom to turn in early for the night.

That next day at the salon, prior to clocking in, she met up with Marcia at the front door with the apple pie with her, fully baked and carved into quarters inside of its tin. While everyone had their backs turned, Mia took the pie and snuck it to the tiny, narrow nook behind her station to keep it out of sight. She hid it at the far end of the narrow shelf behind a row of spare combs and scissors resting in glass cases so no one would see it in the off chance of peeking down there. She also knew all the smells of the salon would cover it up, and even more so if it was hidden from view. When she returned to the front of the salon, Marcia handed her a paper plate and a metal fork.  
“Give Lars the first slice,” she whispered, “if either of them ask why a whole fourth of it is missing, tell them Sonia and I had pieces so there are six eighths left.”  
“I see what you are getting at,” Mia replied, taking the plate and the fork and giving Marcia an embrace before she left the salon. Once the pie, the plate, and the fork were hidden, Mia returned to clock in for the day and told three of her colleagues, including her boss Danielle, an older woman with short black hair which had a streak of silver on one side, about the four men stopping by that day. Eager to play with their hair and style it in any way they wanted, she sharpened her scissors to make sure they were of a perfect razor's edge and double checked all of her combs to make sure the tines were perfect. She had plugged in her curling iron before her station when the front door of the salon swung open.  
Lars entered the salon first with his long hair flying behind him in thick waves; Kirk followed with a big grin over his face. The third man, who stood at about Kirk's height, had bushy golden brown hair down past his shoulders and a narrow lanky body. The fourth rounding out the group was also the tallest, as he ducked his head a bit to enter the salon: he had long but thin, streaky blond waves of hair cascading around a big sweet smile.  
“Oh, my goodness!” Danielle declared from behind Mia. “Look at all that hair!”  
“Yes, ma'am, we got lots of hair,” the tall man at the back replied in a big voice.  
“I'll take you,” Mia pointed at the man behind Kirk, and he hurried towards her and plopped down in the black leather chair before her.  
“I'm Jason,” he introduced himself; Lars took the seat next to them, and with Danielle right behind him.  
“I'm Mia, and I see my boss is tending to Mr. Lars' mane.”  
“Ah, Lars gets the boss lady,” Jason cracked, and Lars let out a cute little giggle that sounded like water tinkling.  
“Lars has the boss lady?” Kirk added.  
“Not the first time that's happened,” the tall man, who Mia figured was James jeered, and everyone started laughing.  
Mia raked her fingers through Jason's thick hair to feel its coarse texture.  
“So what'd you have in mind?” she asked him.  
“I was just thinking a little trim on my bangs and on the sides. My face has been getting a little too hot during our shows.”  
“I see. On the sides, you said? Like over your temples here?”  
“Yeah. Like my hair falls into my face when I'm all sweaty like.”  
“Oh, I see, and it just gets messy after that. Yeah, I can do that for you.”  
Once she and Danielle had brought the two of them to the sinks to wash their hair, she traded between watching the soap and water run through the grooves in Jason's hair and the soft expression on Lars' face that made him look like a little Scandinavian rag doll. She thought about their encounter the day before and the way he gave himself to her in such a privately public place. Mia rinsed out Jason's hair once, twice, three times before all the soap drained away in the sink underneath his head and she guided him back to the black leather chair to dry him off with the soft clean towel and lay the black cover over his body.  
Once his hair was dry, she began combing his hair; out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Lars had closed his eyes once again as Danielle combed his hair from the back and towards each side.  
Mia reached for her scissors while Danielle took the straightening iron resting at the base of the mirror before him.  
The smile crept across Jason's face as she trimmed his hair over his brow and his temples, and enough to keep it out of his face upon performing at their show that night. Every so often, she peered over at Danielle straightening Lars' wavy hair and her giving it a brush every couple of minutes, and most of all, the serene look upon his face. James, who was at the far end of the row, let out a light little laugh every so often. Kirk was talking to the stylist behind him about something, but Mia paid very little attention to it.  
At one point, she loomed behind Jason's head and the neatly trimmed bangs over his brow and the tendrils of hair over his temples.  
“So how's this look?” she asked him. He knitted his eyebrows together in thought for a moment.  
“Just the tiniest bit shorter,” he said, his hand emerging from under the cover.  
“Tiniest?”  
“Yeah, like a quarter of an inch.”  
When he said “quarter,” Mia remembered the pie hidden in the nook behind her. She had to give that big slice to Lars once Danielle was done: she peered over at them to find she was almost finished with straightening his hair, with merely the side of his head left. Mia took her scissors and trimmed Jason's hair a bit more on all sides, and then gave it one last comb through before stopping to take one last look.  
“How's that?”  
“That's perfect! Thank you.” He lifted his hand again to shake hers.  
“It's all my pleasure, Jason.”  
She untied the cover and tugged it away from his body. He stood to his feet once Danielle untied the cover atop Lars' body. Mia set down the scissors on the shelf before the mirror and turned to him.  
“Lars!”  
He turned his head with his eyebrows raised. She gestured for him to follow her. After thanking Danielle, he climbed out of the chair and hurried towards the corner, his long hair drifting behind him like the hair on a show dog all the while. She led him to the far end of the shelf, where the pie awaited him. Careful not to break the quarter Marcia had cut for him, Mia sank the tines of the fork behind the crust and lifted it out of the tin and onto the plate.  
Once he stood before her and out of everyone's sight, she showed him the plate and the fork. His eyes enlarged at the sheer size of the slice of pie.  
“Good Lord,” he breathed. Mia loomed before his head: his hair smelled clean, soft, and as if it had a straightening iron run over it. He turned his head with his lips parted a bit to make sure no one was looking and then returned to her. She stuck the piece of pie right before his face; he closed his eyes as he took in the warm, sweet aroma of the crumble atop the sliced, baked apples. Her fingers crept into the palm of his hand, then followed by the feel of cold metal. She loomed before the edge of the plate and his prominent Nordic brow.  
“Eat,” she whispered, letting go of the fork, “—I want you—to eat—to your heart's true desire.”  
“Right here?”  
She moved closer to his lips to where she could smell the peppermint gum on his breath.  
“Yes,” she spoke in a voice so light, it crept into his mind like a feathery finger tip. He closed his mouth and swallowed before taking the plate and lifting up the fork.  
“Gladly,” he replied in an equally light voice, sinking the tines of the fork into the point of the slice. Mia leaned back against the wall and watched him eat the whole slice. Before he reached the end of the crust, he set down the fork on the edge of the plate and closed his eyes. She smirked at him.  
“Getting full?”  
“Yeah, well, and it is—a big fucking slice you gave me, too. Feels like I'm being loved, though.”  
“Like you're being loved?”  
“Yeah, that nice warm feeling—that is a feeling of love.”  
She loomed closer to his face again, this time to catch the aroma of the crumble on his breath.  
“Finish it, and you'll feel it all the way.”  
He rubbed his right eye before he picked up the fork again and dug into the last pieces of crust. The very last bite he picked up with his fingers; he groaned inside of his throat after he swallowed it down. Mia pressed her hand to his stomach to feel that warmth, that firm full feeling inside of him. She had him again.  
“And if anyone asks, Marcia and Sonia wanted a slice for themselves.” She kissed the side of his neck which beckoned another groan from the inside of his throat.  
“Oh, I love it when you talk dirty.”  
She picked up the pie from the bottom of the tin and guided him out from the nook to meet up with everyone and the puzzled expressions upon their faces, but their expressions changed to excitement once they spotted the pie with a whole quarter missing, resting the palms of her hands.


	6. Chapter 6

“I was told there would be cake,” said James. They had stepped outside to the strip of sidewalk outside the front door and beneath the protective awning outside of the salon; Lars and Jason had hurried across the street to the little bistro for four more forks. Mia had suggested they eat out of the pie tin given there was only one plate and one fork.  
Both Lars and Jason's hair drifted behind their heads as they returned back across the street before the rain picked up again over them. They handed out three of the forks to Mia, James, and Kirk, while Lars kept the one Mia had given him and Jason held onto the fourth one.  
“I was told there would be cake here,” repeated James.  
“There is no cake,” insisted Lars.  
“I could've sworn you said 'cake' earlier.”  
“No, I said—” He hiccuped and brought a hand to his mouth and then his chest. “—'pie.'”  
James chuckled and playfully rolled his eyes, and then sank his fork into the edge of the pie. Every so often, Lars took a glimpse at Mia next to him as she ate down some bites of pie. She knew he was already full of pie, and yet he was still eating more out of the tin. She watched him swallow down more bites and wondered exactly how much he could eat in one sitting, like if he could really hold a lot more food inside of his stomach; she imagined him eating until his stomach swelled up, and then she would hold him around his waist. She pictured him with some extra pounds on his slender body, and his face was much rounder and fuller to where he resembled the full moon looming in the sky. Mia wondered if a bit of weight would help him drum better, and perhaps he could go for longer than a full concert set.  
She lingered closer to him as he took another bite of pie after her and James. She peered down at his body and the seams of his jeans pressed against the sides of his thighs, and thought about him having a little more around his waist, just enough to make him look softer and sweeter. She wanted to touch him again, to reach under his shirt and run her fingers over his warm skin.  
Jason peered down at his wrist watch and almost gagged on his bite of pie.  
“Oh, jeez, we need to get going, you guys. It's almost sound check.”  
James and Lars wolfed down the last few bites together before they all put the forks into the empty tin.  
“Would you guys like me to bring breakfast to your rooms tomorrow?” Mia blurted out. Kirk covered his mouth so he could finish his final bite.  
“I'd love some breakfast you'd make for us,” he agreed. “We're staying at the hotel about a block from the Rose Quarter.”  
“Yeah, me, too,” added James. “Especially since at our last date, each of us paid forty bucks for breakfast and all I got a cup of coffee and a handful of saltine crackers.”  
“All I got was a grapefruit,” said Lars once he swallowed down his last bite of pie. “What—did you have in mind?”  
“I was thinking of arroz con leche,” Mia explained. “Jasmine rice cooked in milk, cinnamon, and sugar, and then served with fruits.”  
“Oh, that sounds delicious,” remarked Jason.  
“Could you use soy milk instead of regular milk?” requested Kirk.  
“Of course. I have to get some fruit at the little market down here, anyways. Some apples, raspberries, mangos, passion fruit, and of course, pomegranate.”  
“You're just fearless, aren't you?” James cracked.  
“Well, of course.”  
Lars threw his arms around her and held her close: his entire body radiated with warmth, most of which came from his chest and the firm feeling inside of his stomach.  
“We will catch you later, darling,” he whispered into her ear.  
“Of course, baby,” she whispered back. She let go of him to give the three of them hugs.  
“Thank you again for the haircut,” declared Jason.  
“It was so good to see you again!” exclaimed Kirk; James held her the furthest from his body, but Mia didn't mind as she took the tin and the forks and returned inside of the salon for the rest of her shift.  
At around four o'clock, she signed out for the day and headed down the street to the corner and the outdoor market with all the displays of fresh fruits. She picked out five of each of the fruits she had spoke of before then, and a jug of soy milk and a sack of jasmine rice, and then walked the three blocks back to the little white and blue house.  
Mia stepped into the front foyer to find the entire house engulfed in darkness. She strode down the hall to the kitchen, and flicked on the light to better see the counter before her. She set down the bags of fruits, the bag of rice, and the jug of milk, and turned her head to hear only silence throughout the house.  
“Wayne?” she called out to the hallway. Silence. She stepped out to the hall and peered to her left to find both the bedroom and the bathroom dark. She turned to the right and crept back down the hall towards the living room. Mia was met with total darkness in there. She returned to the kitchen to prepare the fruits for breakfast tomorrow when she stopped about three feet from the entrance to the kitchen.  
“Wayne? Are you home?”  
A sharp pain shot up her side and over her entire torso, so much that she fell onto her hip on the floor. The pain was followed by deep grooves embedding into her flesh, to the point where it felt as though something dragged over the bone in her hip. She kicked her right leg back and kicked him in the stomach. Mia scrambled to her feet when something trickled down her skin. It was blood. Wayne cut into her.  
“You're mine now,” he growled.  
The overhead light in the ceiling flicked on, bathing the whole corridor in pale yellow light. Mia clasped onto her side and the blood trickled down from beneath her hand.  
“What—Wayne! What the hell?” she sputtered, her entire side throbbing.  
“Why'd you kick me?” he demanded, out of breath.  
“YOU STABBED ME!”  
She limped down the hallway to the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She peeled off her shirt to see the jagged wound on her side right over her hip: blood trickled onto her trousers and so she peeled them off as well, and she stood there in the middle of the bathroom in her underwear. Frantic, she reached for the wash cloth with her free hand and rinsed it down with warm water from the faucet. Mia rubbed it down twice with soap and the warm water to clean out the wound and better examine it.  
He had stabbed her with a small blade and carved a “w” shape into her skin. She grimaced at the sight of it as she rinsed out the cloth with cold water.  
She then reached into the medicine cabinet for disinfectant and a bandage: the wound seared with a stinging pain as she applied the gel, but it was for herself. Careful not to send another wave of pain throughout her torso, she placed the bandage over the wound and breathed a sigh of relief. There was a knock on the door.  
“Mia?”  
“What?” she snapped.  
“What's the fruit and rice in the kitchen for?”  
“I'm making arroz con leche for breakfast tomorrow and taking some of it to Marcia, Sonia, and Ashley. You wouldn't like it anyways—I am making it with soy milk.”  
There was silence. Then his footsteps padded away from the bathroom door. She sighed and turned her head to see her clothes, caked in blood and laying there on the toilet seat. He had ruined her shirt, but she was lucky in the wake of him stabbing her. She thought about running to the police or better yet, to her parents. But she worried about the safety of her parents and if the police would even listen to her. Mia brushed away a tear and picked up her clothes, and headed down the hall to the washing machine in the room across the hall from the kitchen. She reeled at the thought of throwing away her shirt, so she put it into the wash and thought about what to make of it once it was clean.  
That night, she was careful to lay on her left side and not roll too much onto her back lest that wound ache. She closed her eyes once she saw Wayne lumber into the bedroom and slip under the covers next to her: she didn't even want to see him. Indeed, he never apologized to her for doing that; it could have been because her eyes were already closed at that point, but even if she appeared to be asleep, she could at least hear him say it to her.  
He turned out the light on the nightstand next to his side of the bed and at that point, she had drifted off to sleep.  
Mia dreamed that she and Lars were laying bed next to one another again, except his body had filled out: she could feel his slender waist had gone so soft, with about the consistency as cookie dough and with several little grooves all underneath and around his navel, which had all but receded back into his belly. A little double formed underneath his round chin to make his face look so much rounder. She kissed his face and his neck only to look out of the corner of her eye and find the whole entire room was filled with fire, and the flames were leaving behind gaping black holes in the walls.  
“We need to get out of here,” she whispered to him in a hollow voice.  
“I can't move,” he told her in a voice that sounded as if he stood about a mile down a metal tube; his green eyes were massive and round, as big as him.  
“Why is that?”  
“I'm two hundred kilograms.”  
Two hundred kilograms… the math part of her brain had either fallen away or she saw math in a different color in comparison to the rest of the world. She peered up from the profile of his face to the lick of flame lapping out from the spot on the wall over her head and she heard the riff of a Nirvana song emerging out from the hallway next to them.  
This is all my fault, she thought to herself. I did too much for him.  
Mia shook herself awake. The room was still dark, and her hip ached with soreness, and the other side of the bed had been vacated.  
She rolled part of the way onto her back and thought about that coming morning, and if she would have to get up soon to make her arroz con leche there at the house.  
She kept hearing an odd shuffling noise over on the far side of the room near the door. It didn't bother her much at first, but then it continued on with the same rhythm as the alarm clock. It wouldn't stop, and so she opened her eyes to see something dangling off of the top edge of the bedroom door. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness only to figure out it was Wayne's shoes, tied together at the laces and thrown over the door. The shuffling noise came from their soles rubbing against the panel of the door.  
She raised her eyebrow but soon closed her eyes again and tried to go back to sleep, but it was useless. Mia remained there in bed with her eyes closed but her mind awakening and her dream fading away from her memory: the pain in her hip didn't help matters.  
She opened her eyes again at the sight of gray morning light filtering into the room behind her. She climbed out of bed with caution because her hip continued to ache from the stab wound, but she managed to wash up and get dressed in a long sleeved striped sweat shirt and clean, black jeans. She was about to walk down the hall to pick up her purse and run off to Curl Up and Dye that day when she remembered she had the day off once again. Plenty of time to make breakfast!  
She detoured into the kitchen to begin preparing the rice and the soy milk in a ceramic pot with two handles on the stove. The dream of Lars in bed next to her as the house was on fire lingered in the back of her mind. It all felt so out of context, but interesting. She dreamed about him coming to be so big and heavy that he lost all of the ability to even so much as move out of bed. But she didn't want him to be that big, or even big at all: just a little soft touch around his waist and for his face to be a bit rounder. If anything, she wanted him to be stronger.  
Mia kept that in mind as she dialed the heat down before sprinkling the boiled milk with the spices and giving it a stir with a wooden spoon. She took a taste, and hesitated before adding a touch more cinnamon which she then followed with the rice. As she let it all simmer in the pot for another fifteen minutes, she took out a wooden cutting board and a knife out of one of the drawers. While she sharpened the knife, pain surged up her side from the wound on her hip. She winced, but it didn't stop her from sharpening the knife and slicing the fresh passion fruit, the mangos, and the apples into cubic chunks.  
She halved the pomegranates with one chop and scraped out the seeds from the inside in two light flicks of the knife blade; but she paused before chopping the third one.  
Mia peeked behind her to the doorway, but no one stood there. She shrugged and held the edge of the blade still before the middle of the pomegranate for a second. She raised the blade and sliced it in half with one single whack onto the cutting board.  
She dipped the spoon into the rice and took a taste of a few grains, but they still had a tiny bit of crunch, and they needed yet another dusting of cinnamon. She took a step back to eat a couple of raspberries and a few seeds, and take in the warm spicy aroma of the arroz con leche cooking on the stove before her.  
The pain returned to her hip again, and this time she pressed a hand to where Wayne stabbed her. She wondered how he did it more than why he did it as the entire house was dark. Perhaps he knew she was going to be late again and prepared himself, but it made no sense to her.  
As she put a fourth fresh raspberry into her mouth, she began to think about Lars and his band leaving Portland after that day. She thought about asking him for his phone number once she saw him later on that morning, but she wanted something more than that.  
Mia had an idea cross her mind, one that went against all of her reasons for staying with Wayne another day. She had always talked herself out of it because she was afraid of what Wayne would do to her, or to her parents, or to Marcia and Sonia if she left, and he always gave her a reason to not leave, either. But after last night—and given he never apologized to her for it—she needed to reconsider everything; Marcia, Sonia, and Ashley didn't like him, and she knew if he found out about her marriage, none of it would fly with Lars. Perhaps he himself had something up his sleeve, and since he was kind enough to her, she could ask him once the opportunity presented itself upon meeting him later on for breakfast.  
Mia took a step forward to take another taste of the rice and knew it was tender and spicy enough at that point. She stirred it up to incorporate the rest of the soy milk in the pot before adding the sliced fruits. She gave it another stir before she put the lid on the top and picked it up with two oven gloves.  
She switched off the stove burner and headed back down the hall to the hooks next to the door for her coat and her purse, and returned to the kitchen for the pot and the holders. She doubled back outside into the gray drizzly morning and to her car, and drove to the Rose Quarter and the hotel on the other side of town, and all the while with that warm aroma of cinnamon and fresh fruit filling the entire car.  
Mia parked three spots from the front door of the hotel and took out the pot from the passenger seat, and walked towards the front door. She reached the front desk in the warm front lobby to ask for Lars when it hit her.  
He never told her his last name. He could be the sole Lars in the hotel, but it seemed like such a long shot.  
She hesitated right there in the middle of the lobby, holding the ceramic pot with two oven holders and her purse ready to fall off of her shoulder, and feeling like a fool. She was about to turn to one of the chairs and the accompanying tables before one of the vast front windows when a big, booming voice to her left caught her attention.  
“Mia!”  
She turned her head and spotted James and Kirk hurrying towards her from the spiral stairs at the end of the corridor.  
“Oh, hey! Could one of you be a dear and take this for me?”  
“Yeah, I can do it—” Kirk bolted ahead him with his hands held out before him.  
“Be careful, I took it off the stove just minutes ago so it's hot.”  
“I'll be right back—Lars was in the shower and Jason just barely got up,” James replied, doubling back to the stairs. Kirk's fingers slid under hers as he took the pot to the nook before the window behind them; Mia followed him and took her seat. He set down the pot, and lifted the lid, and took a big whiff of the arroz con leche.  
“Holy shit, that smells incredible,” he remarked.  
“Cooked in soy milk, just how you asked.”  
He clasped a hand to his chest.  
“You're too kind—and here comes Jason and James with some plates!”  
Lars soon followed behind them with his hair dripping wet but smelling sweet following his shower. He took the seat next to Mia, and took a large helping of arroz con leche. The five of them fell into a brief silence when Lars spoke up once again.  
“So James and I—well, actually, all four of us were talking,” he started in a low voice, “and we want you to come with us to Seattle tomorrow morning, following our show tonight. I mean—we know you work two jobs and all, but we really want you with us. I am beyond in love with your way around a kitchen as you know—” A smirk crept over his face. “—and the three of them absolutely love you. And you told me your hopes and dreams. It'll only be for a handful of days and then you can come back here to Portland, but we want you with us.”  
Mia glanced up at all four of them looking at her with intent. She had thought about it earlier, and it was as if they had read her mind, albeit without knowing about her marriage before then. Her hip was also hurting again.  
“I'd have to call up both Sandra and Dani, but—I'll see what I can do.”  
Lars showed her a little smile.  
“That's excellent! Every girl should get to go along with a rock n' roll band at some point in their lives.”  
“Oh, I never caught your last name, by the way.”  
“My last name? It's Ulrich.”


	7. Chapter 7

After breakfast, and after he had eaten the most of the arroz con leche, Lars took Mia up to his hotel room on the second floor and two doors down from Kirk and James' respective rooms. The bedspread lay on the floor beneath the foot of the bed, and he had apparently taken one of the two pillows beneath the head board and used it as a teddy bear: it lay near the edge of the bed with a dent in one side from his arm.  
“Close the door,” he told her in a low voice; she shut the door before she examined the rest of the room. An empty shot glass, a large grated box of fresh strawberries, and a large box of tissues stood on the table next to the television and the dresser; his overnight bags lay atop the table beneath the window; she figured when he got up that morning, he had opened the drapes about an inch to let in the daylight. He crossed the room to pull them closed and whirled around to see her push the glass, the tissues, and the strawberries aside to set down the now empty ceramic pot and the holders, and also her purse. She worried about him noticing the wince upon her face as she exerted a bit of extra weight on her injured hip.  
But she faced him and the playful smile crossing his face; his cheek bones filled out in turn.  
“Have a seat,” he gestured to the edge of the bed. Mia switched on the lamp next to the ivory white telephone on the nightstand and took two steps towards the foot of the bed when he stopped her in her tracks.  
“No, no, right there.”  
“Here?”  
“Yes, right there near the nightstand.”  
She sank down the edge of the mattress and he dove forward onto the foot of the bed, and swung his legs around so he lay on his side behind her. She giggled at him at first before he rolled onto his back and stared at her upside down for a few seconds.  
“You little goblin,” she joked. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up into a crawling position.  
“That's hobgoblin to you,” he retorted, crawling behind her to the head board. She turned her head to the left and watched him lean back against the pillow; he lifted his head a bit to get off his hair. His playful smile cocked to the side a bit and his eyes closed part of the way.  
“You see those strawberries over there?”  
Mia turned her head back to the table on the other side of the room and those fresh strawberries resting atop the surface, all while glistening in the pale yellow lamp light.  
“Yes?” She returned to him.  
“I want you to feed me.”  
“Feed you?”  
“Yeah. I will just lay right here on my back, and you take those strawberries, and slip the tips of them right into my mouth and I will eat them right out of your hand. Go on—do it.”  
“Lars, you had so much rice earlier, though,” she pointed out. “More than the three of them.”  
“Yeah, I know. I have plenty of room inside of my stomach, though. Sometimes I feel like a bottomless pit for a stomach. And I don't think it is 'too soon' for us to get close like this, though. I did stick my tongue inside you after all.”  
“This is true, baby boy.”  
“And you refer to me as 'baby boy', too. I guess I should indeed refer to you as 'mama' after all.”  
“But what if—you want to be the master, though?”  
“Me, the master? Hmm…” He tapped his round chin. She leaned to the side to linger before his nose and his lips, the latter of which parted to show his two front teeth to her.  
“Yes,” she whispered to him, “you be the master, and I will be the mistress to serve you.”  
He swallowed as he gazed into her hazel eyes from underneath his bangs, now feathery from drying out.  
“Okay,” his voice croaked out, “so as your master—I command you. Feed me.” The tip of his tongue slithered out from his mouth and onto his bottom lip. Mia climbed to her feet and darted to the table for those big rosy strawberries: the inside of the box glistened with minute water droplets. She returned to her seat on the edge of the bed with the box resting in the palm of her hand; she picked off the one on top and stuck the whole of it below the stem right into Lars' mouth. He sucked on it and pulled his head back to get the flesh of the berry off of the stem. He slipped his hands under his head as he ate up the strawberry. Once he swallowed, he gestured for her to give him another one.  
This on until a few strawberries were left in the box. Lars spread his arms out from his body and lay there on his back with his head flat on the pillow. Mia could tell he was getting very full, but he rolled his head over and gazed on at her.  
“Gimme more—” he breathed out. “Gimme more, darling—”  
“I've given you so many, though,” she insisted. He groaned as he reached down to unfasten the button on his jeans.  
“Do it—do it—please. I am your master, remember?”  
Mia examined the inside of the container and the remaining three berries laying there at the bottom. She did not want to hurt him like how Wayne hurt her, but she did want to satisfy him. She fed him the last two: on the second one, he closed his eyes and groaned inside of his throat, a prolonged guttoral groan. She was hesitant to give him that last one, so much that she thought of picking it up and eating it for herself. But he wanted what he wanted.  
“Open your mouth,” she commanded. His mouth dropped open and she put that last strawberry onto his tongue. He bit onto the part of the flesh underneath the stem and she lifted her hand so he could bite into it. She watched him chew it with his eyes closed and then he choked it down in one more big swallow. He groaned again.  
“Oh—oh, Lord—”  
“Would you like a little comfort?”  
“Yes, please—that was a—a bad move on my part—oh—oh—ohhh—”  
Mia climbed to her feet, and rounded the foot of the bed to the other side, and she lay down on her side behind him. She cocked out her hip to accentuate the curvature of her body. She lifted his shirt to expose his bare skin. His eyelids fluttered shut as she stroked the little sprigs of hair around his belly button. She loomed over his face, keeping her lips and the tip of her nose over his mouth.  
“I'm afraid—” he confessed. “I am afraid if I stay with you, I will get so fat.”  
“You would be such a sexy fat man.”  
“I wouldn't be able to drum, either.” His eyes drooped open. “I would be too fat.”  
She brushed away his bangs and lowered her lips to his forehead from the side.  
“No,” she whispered. “No. No, you wouldn't.”  
“And I already feel fat enough with my face.”  
She kissed him again.  
“Don't say that. I am in love with your face—your round, full face… as full and beautiful as the moon.”  
“Full as—my belly—ohh—oh God—”  
“Just relax. Relax, baby.”  
“Shouldn't you call your bosses?”  
“Of course. I just want to be close to you for a minute, and then I will let you digest and I will use the phone here to call up Dani and Sandra.”  
“I am glad you are able to come with us.” He shifted his weight as she continued to rub his belly. “You are going to—absolutely—” He covered his mouth and dropped his hand to his chest. “—absolutely love Seattle. We've been there once already two years ago after Kirk showed up and there's this—this whole music scene really coming together up there.”  
“Really?”  
“Oh, yeah. All these young musicians who are all—our age, and they're all rehearsing in like their—their—basements and their garages. James and I went to a show—I forget what the venue's called but there was this three piece band called—Malfunkshun, I think it was? And there were two more, one called Green River, while the other one was the Melvins, I believe. All of them so loud, but we play loud so that's the pot calling the kettle black there. Abrasive, raw, but everything you would expect from a bunch of people like us playing their hearts out.”  
“We should go to a show,” she suggested. He covered his mouth again before giving her another groan.  
“We should. Keep your eye out for anything that catches strikes you up there. And perhaps if—if they are up to it at some point, you and Marcia and Sonia and Ashley should make a little road trip up there if ever the chance arises.”  
The tips of her fingers glided down the curvature of his belly before she followed the ring around his navel. He relaxed even more with every rub and every caress onto his skin. She swore his body grew warmer and softer with every circle she made with the palm of her hand and the tips of her fingers. At one point, he opened his eyes and peered down at her hips and showed her a sweet little smile, but then he frowned.  
“Take off your trousers,” he coaxed her. “Make yourself comfortable with me, and it's not like we haven't seen each other, either.”  
She nibbled on her bottom lip as she thought about him seeing the wound on her hip, but she felt it was for the best. She rolled off of the bed and, once she unfastened her jeans, she was careful to let them drop off her hips. Mia let them lay there on the floor next to the bed as she returned to her position there on her side. Lars lifted his head to see the crooked “w” mark glaring back at him from her hip right between the band of her underwear and the bottom hem of her shirt.  
“That's new,” he remarked.  
“Oh, that's nothing.”  
“No, no, no, no, no. What happened there? First of all, that looks fresh. Second—and forgive me if I seem intrusive, but it just looks odd.”  
She nibbled on her lip as she thought of what to tell him. She worried about him finding out the truth that she was married, but now he was curious. The pain from the wound returned for a moment in the form of a deep sting stretching around her hip towards her lower back, much like a surge of electricity.  
“That is a—lightning bolt.”  
“A lightning bolt?”  
“Yes. I have a history of—cutting.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Sometimes I—cut myself.”  
“Why?” He lifted his head and knitted his eyebrows together at that in concern.  
“Sometimes I just—feel so alone. Sometimes I need to do something to make myself feel something.”  
Lars swallowed and gazed on at her with widened eyes. He then lifted himself onto his elbows with a pained groan inside of his throat at that, but he managed to move himself down the mattress so his face hung in front of her hip. He rolled his head over and pressed his lips to the mark. Despite his gentle touch and his soft lips, the pain only worsened with every press of his lips.  
“You—are—right here—with me,” he whispered in between delicate kisses. Mia relaxed with every kiss: she could feel safe with Lars, but she worried about him ever discovering the truth about Wayne. He left another kiss on the mark before he crawled back up the bed next to her. She kept rubbing his belly for a few more moments before he fell asleep right next to her, and his face resembled a Scandinavian rag doll once again. That was her cue to use the phone to call up both Danielle and Sandra for the next couple of days off.


	8. Chapter 8

Mia considered calling up Marcia, Sonia, and Ashley to come with her up to Seattle, but at that point, she was feeling Marcia already clocking in for the day and Sonia and Ashley had no desire to make that trip at the moment. She put down the phone receiver right as Lars rolled a bit onto his left side. The hem of his shirt rode up his body while the waist of his jeans slid down his hips. She examined that dent that was his hip bone poking out, and that lovely skin there making up his slender waist; a gentle curve crossed over his whole belly because of all the food he had eaten.  
Soon, she thought to herself. A few pounds will do.  
She thought of laying back down next to him and giving him another belly rub when a knock on the door stopped her in place.  
Lars stirred a bit but never woke up; she ambled towards the door to peer through the little glass hole. James' face loomed through the glass on the other side; she unlocked the door and pulled it open. She lingered behind the door as the skin on her legs covered in goose pimples all the way down to her ankles: they stopped right above her shoes.  
“Oh, hi,” he greeted, “—what's Lars doing?”  
“Lars? Oh, he's taking a nap right now.”  
“He's taking a nap? We've got to be at sound check and then at rehearsal in like an hour.”  
James slipped past her into the room. While she hoped he wouldn't see her without her pants on, Mia closed the door behind her right as he loomed over Lars' sleeping body.  
“Hey—” James called out, gripping onto his right foot and giving it a shake. “—hey—” Using his first two fingers, he tapped on Lars' exposed belly, which in turn jolted him awake.  
“Pas på med den økse,” he blurted out with a sniffle. He rubbed his right eye, followed by his left eye, and took a glimpse at James and then at Mia, and then back to James.  
“Oh—what's—what's—what's going on—? What'd I miss?”  
“Come on, we gotta get going,” James goaded him.  
“What for?”  
“Sound check.”  
“Oh, right.”  
“Are you okay?”  
“Yeah. I just—made a pig of myself.”  
“I see. I was gonna say: not in front of the lady, Lars.”  
“She doesn't care.”  
“Lars, where are my pants?” she asked, trying to cover up her underwear and her bare thighs with her hands.  
“I dunno—you took them off and that was the last I had seen them.”  
“Do you need help?” asked James as Mia rounded the foot of the bed.  
“Who, me?” she asked.  
“No, him.”  
“No, I've—got it. I'm just—I'm a lazy fuck—always listening to my gut.”  
Mia stooped down to pick up her jeans and Lars pushed himself into an upright position. She slipped her legs inside, careful making sure the edges of the soles slid through all the way, and pulled them over her hips. Meanwhile Lars stood to his feet, and keeping the groan steady inside of his throat. He pulled down his shirt to hide his skin.  
“You sure you're alright?” James repeated.  
“Oh, yeah. I'm just—” Lars tried to button his jeans, but the waist band was a bit too snug for his waist.  
“He made a little piggy of himself,” said Mia as she zipped up her jeans.  
“Indeed I did.” He sniffled again and turned to her with a drowsy expression upon his face. “Would you like to come and watch? We're just going to be getting together with our techs and shit and making sure everything is good to go for tonight. The other alternative is rather obvious. There is not really much of anything else to do, other than lounge in the bed where my fat ass was laying and watch TV.”  
She showed him a smile as she headed towards the table on the other side of the room for her purse.  
“I would love to. I can leave the dish here. And like I said, you are not fat.”  
“Alright, follow me—” James coaxed them out of the room.  
The whole way back downstairs to the lobby and then outside to the street, Lars kept a hand on the lower part of his shirt. Mia lingered close to him; she paid close attention to the little winces upon his face. That was a bad idea for him to lay flat on his back after eating that much.  
The light drizzle falling onto their heads outside didn't seem to help matters for him, either. At one point, James peered back at them with his eyes squinted.  
“You alright, man?”  
“Yeah, I'm just—” He grimaced again.  
“It's alright,” she told him, “just keep walking it off.”  
James swallowed out of nervousness and took one more glimpse at them before crossing the corner towards the Rose Quarter. He scrunched his eyes shut and clasped a hand to his right side.  
“What's the matter?” she asked in a light whisper.  
“I got a stitch—it's not that bad, though. It's okay, it's okay, I'm okay, I am okay—”  
Mia kept her arm around him; she started to wonder if doing this to him was worth it if it brought him pain.  
The Rose Quarter was a massive, looming arena on the north side of Portland with glass front doors and a warm, spacious carpeted front lobby which led to a cold gray concrete corridor stretching all the way around the interior. Mia could tell that, on the other side of those long black and blue curtains hanging from the high rafters overhead at their left, stood the nose bleeds section, which dropped down with the rows of seats leading down towards the floor.  
James told the men in the black shirts that Mia was with them, and so she could come to the backstage area on the other side of the arena with them. He led her and Lars back to the little bright room at the end of the corridor; to Mia's left was a stretch of slippery gray concrete floor and a black curtain to separate the backstage area from the actual stage.  
The room was small, even cramped with the three of them in there, and comprised of soft gray bricks. A half dozen of gray metal lockers stood on the far wall of the room, and before them stood a long, low wooden bench. James kept going towards the lockers, but Lars and Mia took a seat on the bench. A stage hand, an older gentleman with short salt and pepper hair and dressed in a black shirt and matching trousers, entered the room behind the two of them.  
“Would you like something to eat right now?” he asked Lars.  
“Oh, no, thank you,” he moaned, pressing a hand to his belly.  
“We've got a pretty bad tummy ache,” Mia explained.  
“I see—”  
Kirk and Jason ducked into the room behind him right as he stepped out. Lars bowed his head and folded both arms over his belly. Jason patted him on the back in comfort as he slipped by them, but he only continued to groan inside of his throat. He wore a grimace upon his face all throughout sound check and into rehearsal. By show time, Mia was positive he had digested everything inside of his stomach at that point, but he continued to groan in discomfort. He leaned back against her shoulder, and lay his feet over the bench next to them, and tried to relax. She leaned the side of her head against the crown of his head; she took in a whiff of the soft smelling soap he had used to wash his hair that morning and smiled. Soon he would be all sweaty and have to take another shower. Soon he would have to take off all his clothes and make himself smell good again.  
“I have to change out of my clothes,” he said in a low voice.  
“Okay, take your time,” she told him in a near whisper, stroking his shoulder. He was cautious to rise to his feet and unfasten his jeans again. She watched his fingers curl his skin there underneath the bottom hem of his shirt. She thought of giving him another belly rub, but she would have to get him back onto his back again and he had to be here.  
He grimaced again.  
“God, someone perform surgery on me—I can't—I can't take this—”  
Mia couldn't take another second of it. She shot up and shoved Lars against the wall in front of them, and pressed her lips onto his mouth. His voice squeaked even on the inside of his throat as he groaned out in surprise. He widened his eyes at her, that is until she stuck her tongue inside of his mouth. Now they both stuck their tongues inside of each other. He rolled his eyes towards the back of his head as she ran her tongue all over the edges of his teeth and onto his tongue. He closed his eyes once she reached behind him to peel off his jeans. Neither of them noticed the other three men in the room watching them, but neither of them cared.  
Mia ran her hands up the back of his shirt and over the curvature of his back. She was going to take off his shirt for him: she got as far as his shoulders when she knew he was going to fall to the floor. She let go of his mouth and gazed into his green eyes, which stared back at her in all of their hunger and their intensity under his dark raised eyebrows.  
“Stop,” she commanded. He knitted his eyebrows together and opened his mouth to say something but she pressed her index finger to his lips.  
“Stop,” she repeated in a whisper. He nibbled on his bottom lip under her finger; she then dropped it so he could speak.  
“I have to change my clothes,” he croaked out.  
Mia let go of him so he could strip off his shirt and his jeans; she turned around to see James, Jason, and Kirk milling about the room as if nothing ever happened between the two of them. Lars ambled towards his locker to change into faded black jeans, white socks, and white tennis shoes. He closed the door and pressed a hand to his bare belly again. She sighed and stepped closer to him as Kirk and Jason stepped out of the locker room; meanwhile, James combed his hair with his fingers.  
“God—I don't know. I really have no idea, Mia.”  
“Stand up straight.”  
He straightened his back to make his chest and shoulders appear fuller and broader. He pointed his feet towards her and his belly flattened out with his improved stance. She showed him a smile as a result.  
“There you go! And—don't focus on your stomach so much. Focus on the sights, the sounds, everything all around you. Focus on guiding the three of them. You are the master. They must follow you.”  
“Lars!” They turned their heads to see the same stagehand as before standing in the doorway and gesturing for Lars to follow him. He returned to Mia with his eyebrows raised. She pressed a hand to his lower belly next to his navel and smiled.  
“You feel so soft.”  
“I have to go,” he told her in a low voice.  
“Break a leg, baby.”  
He cracked a smile before darting out towards the stagehand in the doorway, which left Mia alone in the locker room with James for a minute. A silvery glimmer on his right hand caught her attention. It took her a second to realize it was in the shape of a skull. She opened her mouth to ask him about it, but he had already ran out of the room after Lars. Mia wondered about going out there to watch them from the backstage as she couldn't stay there in those cold bricks.  
She crept out of the room towards the black curtain and the stagehand.  
She watched Kirk and Jason pick up their guitar and bass in that respective order, Lars take his seat on the stubby black stool behind his vast white skinned drum set, and James step up to the microphone with a flying V guitar slung over his shoulder.  
Mia watched with her fingers part of the way into her ears as the enormous wall of loud sound was almost too much for her. Kirk's guitar was like a streak of lightning spanning over the black sky overhead. Jason's bass vibrated the floor beneath her tired feet. Lars' cymbals crashed all over the place like splattering paint, while his high drums pounded like a black smith's hammer and his kick drum hammered so hard in her chest and her hips that it nearly took her breath away and made her hips vibrate. James howled out into the darkness.  
It all went up into the rafters high over her head like a swirling tornado. The lights shone bright into her eyes. It was all so much, and all so real that she all but forgot her name for a split second. At one point, she starting singing along even though she didn't know the words too well.  
She kept her eye on Lars and how the pains in his belly had gone away. If anything, he seemed stronger. He seemed more focused, more fixated on leading the other three ahead. He seemed to roll when he played.  
Near the end of the set, a smile crept over her face. Apparently filling him so full until it almost hurt him did indeed help him perform, and she would have to keep note of it when they played in Seattle next.


	9. Chapter 9

“Good show, guys,” said the stagehand: his voice sounded about a mile away from the whirring sound in Mia's ears. James threw a thin gray robe around his body as he brushed past Mia and headed back to the locker room. Lars and Jason both gave one last wave to the audience while Kirk slung his guitar off of his shoulder and whipping his dark hair back from his face.  
Jason patted Mia on the shoulder as he walked by her; she thought of hugging Kirk but the beads of sweat dripping down the side of his neck made her reconsider that. Lars strode up to her with a big warm smile over his face. He hadn't broken a sweat: a mere soft glow pointed on the tip of his button nose, and spanned over his full cheek bones, and his hair was bone dry.  
“What the hell—you're not even sweating!”  
“I know, it's really weird, too,” he replied in a muffled voice. He guided her back to the locker room; another stagehand threw a thin robe over his back and he slid his arms into the sleeves. “Yeah, usually when I'm pounding around and banging real hard like that, my hair looks like I just got out of the shower. Sometimes, when it gets real hot, I get all but naked.”  
Mia's hearing started to return by the time he said that last sentence; she pictured him playing in his underwear and wanted to come closer to him because of it.  
“He's like a little billy goat behind those things, too,” noted Kirk, his voice coming in clearer to her; he held a little plastic cup in his hand and took a sip of what appeared to be beer.  
“I am a goat after all,” Lars pointed out, making little horns with his index fingers over the crown of his head, “—Capricorn.”  
“You're a Capricorn?” asked Mia.  
“Yeah—the day after Christmas.”  
“Oh, that's coming up here! I should bake you a cake.”  
“Please do. Then maybe James'll stop bugging me for cake. Chocolate, please.”  
“Any particular frosting?”  
He licked his lips as he gazed into her eyes.  
“Surprise me,” he told her in a low voice, and her ears opened in time for her to hear it.  
“I'm the day before Valentine's Day. That's Aquarius, if I'm not mistaken.”  
Lars raised his eyebrows at her.  
“You water holders are alright.”  
“We hold the water back.”  
“You hold the damn water back.” She giggled and he flashed her a sly grin.  
“Hey, Mia, would you like a drink?” Jason called from the back of the locker room.  
“Oh, no, thanks. I need to find a bathroom, though.”  
“I think there's one down—that way—” Kirk pointed to the corridor to their right, where they came into the back hall of the Rose Quarter. Mia could not recall walking by, but she may have been too distracted by comforting Lars on the way inside to even notice it.  
“I know the showers are down there, but go take a look, though.”  
“Okay—” She turned to Lars himself.  
“How's your stomach, by the way?”  
“A hell of a lot better. I still feel full, but it's not so painful anymore, though.”  
“You were beating on those drums pretty hard, too. Hard and fast. Anyways, I'll be right back—”  
“We will be waiting for you, darling.” He showed her a little wink before stepping into the locker room with Kirk and Jason. Mia adjusted the strap on her purse before taking the walk to the ladies' room down the corridor. All the sights and sounds were still fresh in memory: she would have to learn more of their songs if she wanted to sing along with James. Two small white and blue signs jutted out from the wall on her left and she knew she had found the bathrooms. She lunged for the heavy blue door closest to her when she spotted tall, slender man striding towards her. He had long, shoulder length fiery red hair and wore a black leather jacket and pressed dark blue jeans; she glanced down for a second to see the big black Doc Martens on his feet. His long, wiry limbs seemed to reach out to her like overgrown tree branches. He halted in front of her with a puzzled look upon his oblong face as if he was trying to recognize her.  
“Hi,” he greeted her in a gruff voice.  
“Hi—can I help you?”  
“I just couldn't help but notice you hanging out behind the drum set,” he replied. “Are you with them?”  
“I'm with the drummer.”  
“Oh, he's a sweet guy, isn't he?”  
“Very much so. So sweet, I might go into a diabetic coma at some point.”  
The man chuckled at that, a nice big hearty chuckle from deep inside of him.  
“You know, I used to play guitar with them. Before Kirk showed up, I stood in as lead guitarist.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah.”  
“What happened?”  
“Got kicked out.”  
“What for?”  
“Drinking too much. And James and I weren't really getting along all too well, either. We still kind of don't, but Lars and I have been on good terms, though. I even put a guy in the hospital for him.”  
“I'm a… little afraid to ask.”  
“This happened—just last year. Basically, this guy was coming after Lars and was going to hurt him, like big time. He was this six and a half foot tall behemoth, taller than me even, and you know, Lars is just a little guy. I stopped him right in his tracks by giving him a big ol' fracture in his leg. I feel terrible for doing it, but it had to be done, though.”  
“You were protecting him.”  
“You bet I was. By the way, what's your name?”  
“Mia.”  
“Mia—I'm Dave. Are you from around here?”  
“I've lived here in Portland since I was a child. I was born in Puerto Rico.”  
“Never met anyone from Puerto Rico.” He pressed his hands to his hips and showed her a little smirk. “What do you do?”  
“I'm a baker. I'm also a hair stylist, but I'm a baker for the most part. I'm baking Lars' birthday cake next month.”  
“Oh, yeah, that's right—his birthday's coming up. Are you going to be at their Seattle shows next?”  
“Yes, I am. Called up both of my bosses for the days off and everything.”  
“My band's playing up there with them. I shouldn't say 'with' them—we're going to be at separate venues, but we will be up in Seattle for one day only. Try and get Lars to sneak you in.”  
“I'll see what I can do,” she confessed, adjusting the strap on her purse.  
“I like you, Mia,” said Dave, turning towards the men's room behind him. “And you made a good choice with Lars.”  
He yanked open the door and slipped inside; Mia wasn't too sure about him, but she took his word for it as she stepped into the ladies' room, a bright room with four gray metal stalls and three stone sinks under a long mirror.  
She took the one at the far end and, after hanging up her purse, took a seat.  
She thought of Lars and his stomach. He had a stitch in his side on the walk to the venue, but drumming so hard and so fast not only added to his performance, but made him feel so much better. Added to this, he never broke a sweat. It was as if overeating made him super human, even though she knew that was impossible. She thought of feeding him again before the first Seattle show, and what she could feed him.  
Mia thought about bakeries and restaurants up there in Seattle, and she also thought of liquor shops. She hoped that the next room he stayed in had an oven so she could make him her Puerto Rican donuts, a few, just for him for dessert after a big dinner.  
He asked for chocolate cake for his birthday. But she thought of the frosting and what she could make for him. Perhaps there was a way she could craft little roses out of frosting. But since it was the day after Christmas, she figured roses should be replaced with poinsettias. That was it! Little red and white poinsettias out of frosting over a two tier cake; red and white poinsettias splayed open just for him and his empty stomach.  
Mia returned to the locker room and, all the while, she pictured herself holding a deep dish of pizza, complete with the fresh pepperoni and melted mozzarella cheese inside of the crust. She made another mental note inside of her mind to find things to make pizza for them when they were in Seattle, these four men who were now her boys.  
She poked her head into the room to see Jason and Lars next to each other on the bench. The former brushed his hair while the latter was back in his clothes from earlier: he picked up his pants, and slung them over his shoulder, and ran a hand through his hair once she entered the room.  
“Ah! There she is!” he declared.  
“I was just picturing myself bringing in a big deep dish pizza for you guys,” she confessed.  
“Lars, what you wanna bet she makes great pizza?” asked Jason, stuffing his brush into his belt loop.  
“Now, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves.” Lars playfully wagged his finger at him; Mia eyed the lower part of his shirt and thought of running the tip of her tongue along the curvature of his belly. Maybe Jason can join in on a menage a trois, or at least sit back with James and Kirk and watch the two of them go at it. She could already hear James saying “yeah… that's how you do it” as she and Lars made love on a bed after eating freshly baked pizza.  
She blinked several times and jolted a bit when Lars stroked her shoulder with the tips of his fingers.  
“So, shall we retire back to the room?”  
“Of course. I'll see if I make you something, too.”  
She tilted her head to the side to look at Jason.  
“How 'bout you? Would you like something to eat?”  
“I'd love something to eat, but I don't really want to impose, though,” he said in one breath.  
“You're not going to impose,” insisted Lars.  
“Yeah, you're not imposing,” she added.  
“Nah, that's very kind of you, Mia, but I'll scrounge something for myself,” he reassured them in a calm tone of voice.  
“Tell you what,” she started again, rubbing her hands together, “when we get to Seattle, I'm going to do some grocery shopping. I'm going to look at the bakeries and the little shops up there, and if there's an oven in the room—” She nodded at Lars. “—I'm going to bake you four boys a nice big pizza. Exactly how I imagined it just a bit ago. In a deep dish, with lots of pepperoni and mozzarella cheese inside the crust, and it just smells indulgent.”  
The two of them glanced at one another with their eyebrows raised.  
“I told you, man,” sputtered Lars, “you and James both. She's going to fatten me up. If I stay with her, I am going to get like really, really fat.”  
“I have no doubt about that, either,” remarked Jason with a wink. “But anyways—I'll catch you two kids tomorrow morning.”  
“Sleep tight for me, Jason,” Mia told him.  
“And me, too!” exclaimed Lars; the two of them stepped out of the locker room and followed two men in black shirts towards the back door of the Rose Quarter. Lars and Mia stumbled out to the back side of the arena into the cold black rain outside. The side street was deserted which meant they could make a dash for it back to the hotel. He kept his arm around her as they dodged into the darkness; she covered her head with the sleeve of her coat, even though the rain was light, in the form a fine mist.  
“Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you,” she started over the padding of the soles of their shoes.  
“What's that?”  
“I ran into a guy earlier when I was going to the bathrooms. Some guy named Dave? He used to play with you guys?”  
Lars was silent as they crossed the street at the corner. They reached the other side and, breathing heavy, he gestured for her to stop in place.  
“You ran into Dave?” he asked, pressing his hands to his hips; in the dim light, she could see him squinting from the drizzle falling upon their heads.  
“Yeah. He told me how he used to be the guitarist and he got kicked out because he and James weren't getting along.”  
“He also got mean when he was drunk, too.”  
“He got mean?”  
“Very much so. We always turn into a bunch of clowns when we're tipsy, but he turned belligerent, though. It just came to a point… James told him he was out and gave him a bus ticket back home to La Mesa.”  
Lars breathed out right then and ran his fingers through his hair.  
“Do you wanna know a secret?” He lowered his voice to her.  
“Yes.”  
“I feel a little bad about it, really,” he confessed.  
“About Dave getting fired?”  
“Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think that's why he and I are still friendly to each other. I've tried bringing it up to James I think once before, but I couldn't do it, though.”  
“Why's that?”  
“Just never could do it, out of circumstance. And on the other hand, Dave's band never would've happened had he not been thrown out.”  
“What's his band like?”  
“Megadeth? Er—they're a lot like us, but they're not, though. You will see—er, did he tell you about them playing up in Seattle the same night as us?”  
“Yes.”  
“Okay. I will try to get you in if I can, and that is a promise, my darling.”  
“Also, what do you mean 'out of circumstance'?”  
Lars hesitated, once again with his hands pressed to his hips.  
“James is more of like—I don't know, the reclusive poet who never leaves his room but always gets the girl because he's the guy up front. On the other hand, I'm the guy always going to art shows and meeting people and then going home alone.”  
“Oh, I see. Ah, but not this time, though,” she pointed out.  
“No, not this time,” he echoed, putting his arm around her for the final stint back to the hotel.  
Mia was unable to make him a little midnight snack as her only other option for food stood in the vending machine at the far end of the second floor hallway. He convinced her that he still felt full and so she went to bed with him that night: she took off her shoes and peeled off her jeans before she lay down next to him in bed and wrapped her arms around his waist. The skin right below his navel once again felt like the smoothest stick of butter against the tips of her fingers. Once his chest started to rise and fall at a slower pace, she reached up with her right hand to brush his hair towards her; she gave a delicate little good night kiss on the side of his neck.  
She held him close to her like a teddy bear and drifted off to sleep.  
When she awoke, she lay there with her eyes still closed and the tips of her fingers caressing his chest and the high part of his belly. She could feel something inside of him, something of a caving in followed by a light bubbling feeling. He was hungry.  
Mia opened her eyes to see the slender beam of gray light shining on the wall in front of them, and his placid sleeping face right before her. She kissed the side of his neck once again and he groaned inside of his throat.  
“Hey,” she whispered into his ear.  
“Mmm—”  
“Hey—”  
She kissed the edge of his ear, once, twice, four times before she stuck the tip of her tongue near his earlobe. He wrinkled his nose at the feel of her tongue and shook his head. His eyes fluttered open and he reached up to rub the sleep out of them.  
“Good morning, sunshine,” she told him.  
“God morgen,” he breathed out, rubbing his eyes once again and sniffling. He tried to turn over onto his back but she still had a firm grip on his body. “—mmm, what time is it?”  
“I'm not sure, but I can tell you're hungry just by feeling your tummy.”  
“I am hungry—” He rubbed his eyes a third time. “God, I cannot wake up.”  
“Wanna get some coffee?”  
“—er, yes, please. Er—I wonder if James is up…”  
Mia let go him, and peeled off the covers, and rolled out of bed. She padded around the foot of the bed to put her jeans back on; she unlocked the door and was about to step out into the hallway when a bright pink box laying before the doorway caught her attention. A folded piece of paper lay on top of the lid; she crouched down and picked up the paper to read the neat penmanship in dark blue ink:

“Courtesy of me and the girls,  
have fun, sweetie – we'll see you Thursday  
xoxo, Sandra”

Mia gasped in excitement, and picked up the box, and closed the door behind her. She held the box before her as if she returned to Lars with a silver platter; he swung his bare legs around and slouched there on the edge of the bed, yawning and rubbing his eyes once more. He lifted his head to see her and his eyes widened at the sight of the pink box.  
“What do we have here?”  
She halted in front of him and opened the lid with her left index and middle fingers. He gasped and showed her a mischievous little grin.  
“Eat,” she ordered in a near whisper. He licked his bottom lip before leaning forward for one of the donuts inside, which happened to be one of her Puerto Rican donuts. He held it up to her mouth and her nose: it smelled fresh, as if Sandra and Marcia had baked it that morning.  
“Only if you eat with me,” he retorted. She flashed back on Ashley had told her the other night: if ever and whenever he offered her food, she must take it. She moved her head forward with her mouth open and took a big bite. The inside was loaded with chocolate, the exact right amount, accompanied with a kiss of cinnamon and a nugget of nutmeg; as she chewed up the bite, she caught a peppery glint of tequila. The frosting, on the other hand, was sweet and with the right amount of spice embedded somewhere near the back of her mouth. Before she swallowed, she caught that last little glimmer of spice before it made its way down to her stomach.  
“Tastes like home,” she whispered. He moved the donut to his mouth and started to eat it for himself. She took a seat next to him on the edge of the bed and began eating for herself. She lingered close to his face as they both ate their donuts; at one point, before eating her last two bites, she used her free hand to feel up his flat belly and his chest  
“I just pictured you with a nice round potbelly,” she confessed, caressing his waist.  
“I thought you said I wasn't fat,” he pointed out with his mouth full.  
“And you're not—but I did picture your belly as nice and round. And beautiful.”  
“Like my face.”  
“Like your face.”  
“Swallow that donut and I will give it to you right here, darling.”  
“Only if you do the same,” she whispered to him. He crammed the last bite of donut into his mouth and threw his arms around her. Lars had only given her a single kiss on the lips when a knock on the door stopped them both in their tracks.  
“Lars? Are you awake? We gotta go!”  
“Ah, God damn it,” he said with his mouth full.  
“Seattle, baby boy,” she promised him before taking her one last bite.  
“Seattle,” he agreed, still with his mouth full.


	10. Chapter 10

Mia and Lars split the box between the two of them on the ride up to Seattle in the first car; James, Kirk, and Jason each were in separate black cars with their own drivers behind them. The driver recognized her from their lunch together, and allowed her into the back seat with him.  
“We'll keep it clean, I promise,” she told him when he frowned at the pink box tucked under her arm. She slid into the smooth leather seat next to Lars with the box moved from under her arm to her lap. Lars licked his bottom lip as she lifted the lid to show him the last four donuts, each of them with that red frosting on top, glistening in the light shining through the side windows.  
“Would you like me to feed you, baby?” she asked him.  
“Behage,” he answered, leaning towards her chest and angling those cherry lips to her face as if he was beckoning a kiss from her. Mia reached into the box for a donut and, using her index finger and her thumb, pulled it apart. She held the piece to his mouth and he slowly parted his lips, and she slipped it onto his tongue. He closed his mouth and took his time eating down the bite, which allowed her to have a piece for herself.  
As he swallowed down the bite, he tilted his head back so as to show her his throat. She thought of kissing him there but he fluttered his lashes at her for another bite.  
Lars held onto the top of her thigh as they merged onto the freeway; his hand slid down to her knee and then back into the inside of her thigh. He held his lips close to her face again and she broke off another piece for him. The tires of the car changed tone as they started to cross over the bridge from northern Portland and into Vancouver.  
She did this with another donut and, when she felt three was enough for her, continued to feed him until there was one left inside of the box. He rested his hands on top of his stomach and leaned the side of his head against her shoulder. Mia set the box onto the seat next her and put her arm around him.  
“Would you like me to rub your belly?”  
“Er—not yet,” he advised in a low voice. “Maybe when I am full of your gorgeous pizza and having to unbutton my trousers, you can.”  
She reached up to brush his bangs back from his forehead and kissed him there. He closed his eyes as a little smile crossed his face. She kissed him again, and twice more before he slid his head off of her and landed in her lap. Mia held his face in her hands: the skin on the sides was like caressing the sweetest and softest of silk.  
“I can't wait 'til you get so much softer.”  
“Softer?”  
“Softer. Here—”  
Mia lifted the bottom hem of his shirt to touch the skin on his waist.  
“I'm already soft there,” he scoffed.  
“Ah, but your skin is. Doesn't mean you are.”  
“Oh, I see what you are doing.” He squinted his eyes at her. “You really are trying to fatten me up, aren't you?”  
“I want you stronger,” she whispered into his face, “and I want you softer.”  
“And when my belly is so very full, I turn into an absolute machine so you are definitely onto something here, my darling.”  
She arched her back and leaned forward to kiss his forehead once again. The tone of the tires of the car shifted again and she knew they had entered Washington.  
“Something about you talking about feeling full—there's just something so sexy about that.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. When you say you're full of food, or when you've got your paws on your tummy like you do right now, it just—it just—”  
Mia unbuckled her seatbelt so she could shift her legs to the right. Lars lay his head on the seat as she lay down next to him. She kissed him square on the mouth and pressed her hands back to the sides of his face. With every kiss came a little groan from the inside of her throat; he closed his eyes as she pressed her body closer to him. A damp sensation formed right in between her legs.  
“Take—my ovaries—away from me,” she whispered in between kisses.  
“Mmm—” he moaned out.  
She felt something brush against her thigh, but she didn't care. Something else brushed against the side of her upper arm before it moved towards her back. It took her to realize it was his hand unhooking her bra.  
“Let me—Let me—just—” he sputtered. Her fingers slid from the side of his face and past his ear and into his hair. Careful not to hurt him, she wrapped a few tendrils of wavy hair around her fingers and tugged a bit. She tugged hard enough to make him release his fingers from the latch on her bra upon the feeling of her tugging on his hair.  
“No way,” she whispered, “—you nasty little boy.”  
“—but I want—”  
She removed her hand from his hair and reached down for the crotch of his pants. So that was the thing that brushed against her thigh.  
Her fingers curled around the fabric and she pressed the pad of her thumb right on the top there. His mouth gaped open and he tilted his head back, and showed her the Adam's apple in his throat. He gasped for air as she pressed harder.  
“Do you like that, baby?” she whispered into his ear.  
“Oh—Oh—Oh my fuck—fuck—fock—fock—focking hell—oh fock me—”  
“Do you like that?”  
“Yes—yes—yes—” He shot out his tongue at her and crossed his eyes before snapping them shut. The car made a gentle curve to the left and Lars shot out his hand to the door handle over their heads.  
“How 'bout this?”  
She let go of him and slid her hand around his hip; she pinched his butt in spite of his jeans. He grimaced in slight pain and she lay the palm of her hand on the curvature of his butt. A nervous smile crept over his face at the feel of it.  
“Once I get you absolutely stuffed like a turkey,” she whispered right in his ear so he could hear it over the engine revving a bit higher to pass someone on the road, “I'll make sure you have got room for desert and then I will give you a little spankin' because you've been so bad.”  
“Please do, skat,” he pleaded in a hushed voice. “Please do—and I will take them from you—”  
“Why do you want to take them?”  
“Because—you've been worse than me—” His voice broke as she squeezed him.  
“What's that?” she taunted him.  
“You've been worse than ME—” His voice took a turn into a light squeak as she squeezed him harder. Mia shoved her tongue into his mouth and she felt his hand grab her in the same spot, which only prompted her to kiss him even more. They were in that back seat until they were closing in on Mount Rainer, wherein the driver stopped for fuel and to knock on their window to catch their attention.  
Mia pushed herself off of him and glanced back at the driver, who peered through the window at the two of them with a puzzled look upon his face. She groaned in disappointment.  
“Guess the fun's over for the time being, big boy,” she said, pushing herself off of him.  
“Damn it, I was just getting interested,” he croaked out, rubbing his eyes and then running his hands down his chest.  
“I know. But there will time to ourselves soon, though.”  
They both waited there in the back seat until the driver finished fuelling up the tank; and all the while, Lars licked his lips and made little noises inside of his throat, and showed Mia the side of his neck.  
“Not yet, babe,” she told him in a low voice.  
“Come on, I'm randy—”  
“I know you are, and I am, too. But don't worry, baby doll—” She left a sweet little kiss on the side of his neck. “—we will be at the room soon.”  
Once the driver climbed back into the front seat, he adjusted the rear view mirror so he had a better look at the both of them back there. But the two of them managed to cuddle there in the back seat all the way up to the hotel room in Ballard, which overlooked the cold black choppy waters of the Puget Sound. At one point, Lars lay the side of his head against her chest, right in between her breasts. Meanwhile, he kept his right hand tucked in between her thighs. Every so often, Mia glanced down at the crown of his shiny hair; when he shifted his head back, he stuck out his tongue like an excited little puppy.  
They wound through the darkening streets of downtown Seattle, towards the small, tight knit neighborhood down by the water and the tiny but bright hotel, and all while underneath a navy blue sky growing darker and darker with the incoming clouds.  
Two men were seated on the front step of the hotel and watched the car pull up to the curb.  
The one on the left had long blond hair down past his shoulders, bright blue eyes, and a cute little dimple in his chin, while the one of the right had shoulder length dark hair, dark eyes, and a round face, and he appeared to be much taller as his knees rose higher from the sidewalk. Both men were cloaked in fuzzy, soft looking cardigan sweaters, blue denim jeans, and black Chuck Taylors.  
The driver climbed out and opened the side door to let Lars, Mia, and the pink donut box out of the back seat. He hesitated when he examined the two men and the driver took Lars' luggage out of the trunk.  
“Kurt and Krist, right?” he asked as part of his broken voiced greeting.  
“Yeah,” replied the one on the left with a sweet dimpled smile.  
“You guys still looking for a drummer?”  
“No, we actually found a guy,” explained the one on the right in a big bold voice, “his name's Chad, he's from Bainbridge Island across the Sound. We're waiting for him to show up here.”  
“Oh, right on! And Kurt—” Lars gestured to the one on the left. “—was it 'Whiplash' you liked?”  
“Yeah,” he repeated, keeping that little smile over his face. “That's probably my favorite from Kill 'Em All.”  
“I always try to remember the favorites of some of our biggest fans.”  
“Lars—” interrupted Mia; he turned right when the driver handed him his room key.  
“Oh, thank you.”  
“Room Twelve,” said the driver in a flat voice.  
“Do you guys know of any little markets around here?”  
“Any markets? Like the super market?” Kurt followed along; he pointed down the street to Mia and Lars' left. “There's a place down this way, and—” He climbed to his feet; he was about as tall as Lars, but a little bit heavier. “—I'll come with you and Krist can help Lars get settled into his room here. This is kind of an odd neighborhood, and I can tell you're not from around here, so I don't want you walking alone.”  
“Oh, thanks man!” declared Lars, picking up his overnight bag from the sidewalk and waving off the driver. Mia adjusted her shoulder strap and Kurt lingered close to her as they began down the street.  
“So are you from around here?” Mia asked him.  
“I'm actually from Aberdeen,” he answered, stuffing his hands into his pockets and his blond hair drifting behind him. “It's about an hour south from here, right on the coast. Krist and I have known each other for a couple of years now, and yes, we are in a band together.”  
“Oh, really? What do you do?”  
“I play guitar and I sing and write songs. Krist plays bass, and we've been looking for a drummer for some time now.”  
“Do you have a name for yourselves?”  
“We had a couple of running names, but we're thinking of using Nirvana. We gotta get a hold of our manager first, though.”  
“Nirvana, I like that!”  
“It sounds nice, right? Pleasant. Achieving of bliss.”  
“How do you know Lars?”  
“They came up here before and Krist and I are big fans of their music. I've always been an outsider and a freak so they resonate with me—watch your step, watch your step—” Kurt set both of his arms around her and guided her away from the collapsed edge of the sidewalk. He put her in front of him so they walked single file along the gaping hole until the sidewalk returned in its entirety. At that point, they reached a small bright lit market made of pale brick there on the corner.  
“Here, let me help you,” he offered as they entered through the sliding doors of the market. “What do you need to get?”  
“Well, I was thinking of making pizza for Lars and the guys, but I don't know if the three of them are here yet.”  
“Making pizza? Like, from scratch?” His face lit up when she said that.  
“Yeah. I'm a baker, so I put my hand up and offered to do it for them. I also don't know if there's an oven in Lars' room, either.”  
They stopped there in the middle of the floor right in front of the produce section; Kurt rubbed his chin in thought for a minute. His blue eyes scanned the room around him all the while.  
“What do you think?” she asked.  
“This is gonna seem kinda lame but—how about making pizza bagels? You know, we can get one of those big bags of plain bagels over there—” He pointed to a rickety wooden shelf in the far corner of the room, next to the rows of fresh loaves of bread. Several plastic bags of large bagels piled over the top shelf of the display. “—and then some sauce and grated cheese and pepperoni, and you can have your pizza that way.”  
“But what about the cheese, though? Real melty cheese, though?”  
“Oh, right, right. Yeah, 'cause uncooked pizza is like a corporate rock.”  
She chuckled at that and Kurt showed her another sweet smile.  
“He might have an oven in his room,” he pointed out, “that hotel's actually pretty nice even though it is where it is. It's worth a shot.”  
She sighed through her nose. And on the other hand, she never told him about her intention with the pizza other than to feed Lars with it. It was worth a shot to do it. Mia nodded her head in agreement, and she and Kurt went ahead to get one of those sacks of bagels, followed by mozzarella cheese, a jar of tomato sauce, and already sliced pepperoni.  
“I'm a baker and yet I forgot my tools,” she confessed to him as they headed back to the front of the market.  
“Tsk, tsk, don't you know you should always bring your stuff with you?”  
They took the line closest to the door, and they split the bill at check out. When they returned to the darkness outside with the sack of bagels and a separate paper grocery bag, Mia felt the first drips of light rain on the top of her head. Kurt remained close to her but he couldn't put his arms around her again as he slung the bagels over his shoulder before walking back to the hotel. Krist stood on the front step with a newspaper covering his head.  
“Cute hat,” Mia called out.  
“Looks like rain today,” he announced in a bold voice, holding out one hand.  
“Where's our little Danish friend?” asked Kurt, pulling the edges of his sweater in closer together with one hand.  
“Making himself comfort-a-ble,” answered Krist; he turned to Mia with a little smirk upon his face. “And he wanted me to say that there is indeed an oven in his room. It's small, but it's definitely an oven. He's hungry, too.”  
“Yes!” Mia tipped her head back and shook her free fist; three little droplets of rain fell onto her forehead. Kurt gestured for the three of them to file into the front lobby of the little hotel, a warmly lit white room with a blood red carpet and soft ivory white walls. A hallway stretched before them towards the back of the building: Lars poked his head out from the second door on the left, with his long hair dangling down towards the floor, and his face lit up when he recognized them. He gestured for Mia to come closer; she turned to Kurt and Krist, the former setting down the bagels on the floor while the latter took off the newspaper and tucked it under his arm.  
“Thank you both,” she told them, “and you're more than welcome to join us.”  
“That's real kind of you, but we're going out to eat once Chad gets here,” Kurt explained a single breath.  
“Okay. Well, if either of you need anything, we're right down there.”  
“Absolutely! You two have a good night.” Krist flashed her a wink and Kurt helped carry the bagels down the hall to the small, cozy room on the left side. There was a slender twin bed with a soft blue duvet on the top in the middle of the room; next to it stood a short nightstand with a spindly black lamp with a blue shade, then a small kitchen which had a minute black oven and a small silvery refrigerator.  
“We are staying two nights after all,” Lars pointed out with a sly smile. Kurt set down the bagels on the floor before the foot of the bed.  
“Slight change of plans,” Mia started, and he shrugged and shook his head.  
“That's alright. I will turn down pizza. And thank you again, Kurt.”  
“It's my pleasure.” He turned to her with a bewildered expression on his face. “I didn't catch your name, by the way.”  
“I'm Mia. Mia Panadera.”  
He knitted his eyebrows together as if he was putting two and two together inside of his mind.  
“Are you Puerto Rican?”  
“Indeed, I am. I've lived here in the States since I was a child.”  
“I'm Kurt Cobain and I'm a white American.” She giggled at that. “Anyways, I'll catch you both later—” He jogged out of the room and closed the door behind him. She turned to Lars, who lowered his eyelids part of the way and showed her a playful smirk.  
“Shall I heat up the oven?” she asked.  
“Please, darling.”  
“How many should I make?”  
“Surprise me.”  
“Second time you've said that, you really must want me to fill your belly until you're immobile.”  
“Not necessarily.”  
“Oh, baby, you know you want it. I am going to make you so many of these things until you take your pants off and come over here and fuck me.”  
“Why don't I just take my pants off right now and I can eat for you and make you want me to fuck you?”  
He licked his lips. She squinted her eyes at him. She knew what he wanted and she could give it to him all night long.  
“It's a deal.”  
“And by the way, I thought you were going to rub my belly and then slap my ass after we dine in tonight.”  
“Taking it slow. We are going to simmer like mozzarella cheese. You bad, bad—bad boy.”


	11. (part 1)

“No—no, please, darling—I can't eat another bite.”  
Lars lay on his back on the bed with his arms spread out from his body. He had taken off his shirt and unbuttoned his jeans: he tilted his head back to show Mia his throat. He parted his lips part of the way and groaned. He rolled his head to the right to emphasize his jawline. A soft blush crossed the opaque skin upon his face, and the curvature of the inside of his neck and his collar bones was only accentuated by the tilting of his head. Mia licked her lips as she eyed the little plumes of dark hair running down his chest. And then there was his belly, his gorgeous belly now rising up like a small hill and his navel poking out at her like a little hole. The hair from his navel running down to the top of his belt never looked more delicious to her. He let out an exhausted sigh.  
“No—I literally—I—oof—I cannot—I'm so—so full—oh—ooh—oh—”  
“Yeah, you sure did make a little piggy of yourself just then,” she remarked, “wolfing down all of those bagels—you had so many of them. It was as if you were starving to death and didn't have someone to feed you. And I ate a lot myself, too.” She set a hand on her stomach.  
“Yeah, but—you didn't—you did not—”  
“I didn't what?”  
“You didn't—”  
“I didn't what?”  
“You did not—” He raised his arm to wag a finger at her.  
“I didn't what?” She lunged for him and held herself in a push up over his body there on the bed; she rested on her knees so as to straddle his hips. He groaned again and his chest started to heave at the sight of her looming a mere few inches over his body. His green eyes stared right into her soul, and her hazel ones scanned over his round face and his subdued body underneath her. With every breath he took, a light whispery moan escaped from his lips.  
“What didn't I do, baby?” she breathed out. When he didn't reply, she dropped her lips onto his; he closed his eyes when she moved her lips to underneath his chin and over the front of his neck. He gasped at the feel of her lips upon his bare collar bones.  
“—please—” he whispered. She moved her head back up to his face so she loomed right over his lips.  
“I got you right where I want you, baby,” she said in a voice so soft she may as well have breathed it. She kept her nose close to his mouth. “You smell like sliced baked tomatoes. Want a little belly rub?”  
“Oh my God—please. Please, darling—I feel—I feel like—like—like I'm gonna—I'm gonna pop—”  
She pushed herself onto her left side and cuddled up next to him: his entire body radiated with warmth. She ran the tips of her fingers down his chest towards the upside of his belly. Her fingers glided along his skin to his navel and then back up; careful not to hurt him, she lay the palm of her hand right over his stomach. That spot there felt firm; his whole entire belly felt like a nice ripe watermelon, all plump and beautiful and chock full on the inside with juice and nourishment. He had had enough.  
Mia tossed her hair back before resting the side of her head in the palm of her other hand; she massaged his whole full belly with one hand and a smile upon her face.  
“You are so gorgeous right now,” she told him. He closed his eyes and relaxed his whole body as she kept at it.  
“You really are—just so full of love right now. We oughta mix it up, though.”  
“Like with—what?”  
“Oh, I don't know—with fruits and veggies. I'm just picturing myself feeding you grapes or blueberries, kind of like how I was feeding you those strawberries. We can go down to Pike Place Market tomorrow before the show and I can watch you eat up.”  
“I could—use a little—of that—I suppose—” He shifted his weight. He took in a gulp of air before letting out a big hairy belch. Mia pulled her head back at the sound of it.  
“Oh, oof, pardon me. No, excuse me, I didn't mean to—sour the mood with that. That did help, but it is going to be a while before I can get up to—to—to fuck—I cannot move, I cannot speak—and most of all, I cannot f—fock—fuck—”  
She glanced over at the kitchen counter at the sight of one more pizza bagel. She had forgotten about that one and Lars was already quite full with all of the bagels he had eaten.  
“There's one left,” she announced with a devilish grin.  
“There is?” He raised his eyebrows and gaped at her. “Oh, no—”  
“Oh, yes. Yes, baby.”  
“Oh, fock no—”  
Mia scrambled to her feet to fetch the bagel: it was still warm and crispy on the bottom, with the cheese melted over the tomato sauce like a smooth white drizzly cap. She took a whiff of its warm aroma as she sashayed back to him, still flat on his back on top of the bed.  
“Come on, baby—you know you want it—”  
She sank down on the top of the bed next to him and crossed her right leg over her left so as to put extra emphasis on her hip. Lars shook his head and swallowed out of nervousness.  
“I can't—” he sputtered. “I—I can't—”  
“Come on—” She held the bagel near his face so he smelled the cheese and the bread.  
“I—I can't—” He pinched his eyes closed.  
“Come on—please?”  
“I can't—I can't—I can't, look at me! Look at my gut!”  
“I'm looking, and you've got quite the cute little gut going here—”  
She loomed close to his face.  
“Come on—do you have any idea how sexy you are right now?”  
He dropped his gaze to her body and licked his lips, the tip of his tongue bright pink from eating and from thinking about her.  
“I did take your—your—ovaries after all—”  
“Indeed you did, baby. Now, come on—it can just be one bite. Just one more. Surely you've got room in there for one more bite.”  
He groaned inside of his throat before closing his eyes. She waited a few seconds before he opened his mouth as wide as he could make it and sank his teeth into a great part of the bagel. He lay his head back down as he chewed up that bite.  
Mia set the bagel on the foot of the bed behind her and climbed over him so she lay on his left side. She tugged him by the shoulder onto his side so they faced each other. He kept his eyes closed; her left arm slithered around his body and she held onto the right side of his butt. He crinkled his nose when she gave him a slight squeeze followed by a gentle pinch. She followed it up with a couple of light spanks.  
Lars swallowed down the bite and opened his mouth to let out a soft moan.  
“Do that again,” he whispered. She spanked him again.  
“Harder—” She did it a fourth time, this time jerking her hand back further for a harder slap.  
“Yes—” She did it again.  
“Come on—” And again, that time she added a second quick one.  
“Come to papa—” She did it again and again.  
“That's right—let's—let's do it—right here—right now—”  
Mia reached down his unbuttoned jeans, and inside of his underwear, and held onto him. He closed his eyes and let out another low moan. She stroked him until her wrist fell numb and he rolled back over onto his back.  
She gave him another kiss on the mouth and then a kiss on the side of his neck.  
“So Pike's Place tomorrow?” she asked him, fluttering her lashes at him.  
“Yes, please. But for now, let me--just--be your master and put on a show for you tonight.” He reached down and peeled off his jeans: it was difficult because he was laying down, but he managed to do it right there. They slid off of his legs and gathered around his ankles near the floor. He lay there on the bed, wearing only his underwear and his lips parted. Mia licked her lips and loomed closer to him.  
“Let me just--just--”  
“Take your time, baby,” she told him in a light, airy voice, and all the while pressing a finger to his lips. “Allow me to enjoy this little feast for my eyes here. And then--maybe, just maybe--we can go all night.”


	12. (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :* :*

Once they were both ready, and she had stripped off her clothes, Mia planted both feet on the bed before her and squatted over Lars' face. Careful not to fall onto him, she leaned back so she was right over him. He then stuck out his tongue and lapped away inside of her like a slithering snake. She closed her eyes when she felt him inside of her.  
“So far,” he whispered in between licks, “and so wet—”  
A sharp pain pulsated on her hip; peering through one eye, she spotted the little “w” shaped cut on her hip. After not even crossing her mind, it began to ache once again. But Lars' tongue helped take her attention from the pain, from that little wound there. She need not think of Wayne anymore. She had Lars on the inside of her.  
“How's your desert, baby?” she asked, tilting her head back and closing her eyes again.  
“Decadent—” he answered, taking another stroke against the outside of her clitoris. “Would you like yours?”  
“Mine?”  
“Yes—look to your—right.”  
She opened her eyes to see him erect. She rolled onto her left just as he took another lick; she peered back at the sight of him licking his lips and lifting himself onto his elbows. Mia crawled around him to his hips and yanked down his underwear so as to expose him. She put her mouth around the end until it was nearly towards her throat. Lars gasped as she starting sucking as if she had a popsicle.  
“—fock—it's like fifty belly rubs—at the same time! Fuck, yes, darling—yes, baby—that's it! That's! It! THAT'S! IT! HOLY MOTHER FOCKING SHIT BALLS, YOU DO THAT LIKE A FOCKING PRO!”  
While she continued sucking, her fingers slithered his hip to caress the side of his butt again. Her fingers pulsated so as to give him a squeeze: she could taste something inside of her mouth.  
“Tell—Tell—” Lars stammered, his voice breaking and squeaking. “Tell—the bastards—I'm coming—”  
She lifted her head, and gave him a light little spank all the while; he came right as she released her mouth from the tip. She set her hands on either side of his head and loomed over his face: she had left his skin flushed and radiant, but without a single bead of sweat, much like after the show from the night before. She stared into his green eyes as his chest heaved and light little whimpers emerged from his throat with every breath.  
“Shall we call it a night?” she asked him in a low voice.  
“Yes—”  
She planted a delicate kiss right onto his cherry lips before climbing off of him. He groaned as he sat upright and pulled his underwear back on over his hips; he kicked off his jeans, which still gathered around his ankles, and then climbed into bed, under the soft covers, with her once she had turned off the lights to leave the room engulfed in darkness. That time, he lay behind her so he had his arms around her waist. She felt the tips of his fingers caress over the curvature of her hip and over the little “w” shaped wound there.  
“Please don't hurt yourself anymore, Mia, darling,” he whispered into her ear; his lips caressed the outside of her ear and then the side of her neck. He kept kissing her until they both fell asleep spooning in bed.  
When she awoke to the morning light filtering through the kitchen window, she found he had never let go of her over the course of the night, and his arms were still in place around her nude hips, and his hands rested on the curvature of her belly. His lips brushed on the side of her neck as part of his good morning to her.  
“Honey pie—” he whispered into her ear. Her hand slithered behind her so as to feel the lower part of his belly, that dark hair and that sweet skin around his waist that was already feeling softer to the touch.  
“Good morning, gorgeous,” she whispered back to him. “I'm starting to feel a little bit of flesh coming in on you.”  
“Funny you say that because I am like really hungry right now.”  
Mia jerked onto her back so she could feel the lower part of his belly with both hands.  
“Am I still gorgeous?” he asked her as a smirk cracked across his blushed face.  
“Very much so. I could touch you all day, but I don't want you to go hungry.” She brought her hands to his shoulders and then the base of his neck: his skin felt like the warmest and softest of silk.  
“And you definitely know my appetite, too—” He licked his lips again. “I'm really thirsty right now, too. But God—after last night, I could definitely eat a whole cake straight out of your hands right now. You know—I could have my cake and eat it, too. Just stuff it all right into my face, and make sweet love to it, and all the while, make you watch—”  
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, here's a little taste of your breakfast, big boy—”  
She slid her tongue into his mouth to stop him right in his tracks and shut him up for a few seconds. The inside of his mouth felt like warm velvet, and he still tasted like her with a little flavor of the tomatoes from the bagels, and his teeth were as hard as rocks. This man needed to use those teeth again at some point. She slipped her tongue out of his mouth and licked her lips.  
“Am I still a bad boy?” he lowered his voice to a near whisper. Mia used her index finger to caress the lines and curves on his chest.  
“Oh, yes. Come on, let's get dressed and I'll take you down to Pike's Place for a—you know, a little bite to eat.”


	13. Chapter 13

Chad Channing looked as though he could be Lars' buttoned down, American cousin with his long thin shiny hair, round moonlike face, and enormous brown eyes under thick dark eyebrows: he stayed two doors across the hall from Mia and Lars' room, and by the time they stepped out to the hallway, fully dressed for the day and the driver called up to take them down into downtown Seattle, he poked his head out from the inside of his room with tendrils of straight hair dangling down from the side of his head.  
“Heard a little racket in there last night,” he remarked with a sly grin. “Kurt, Krist, and I were wondering if everything is alright between the two of you.”  
“Well, of course,” said Mia as Lars put his arm around her.  
“You must Chad,” he followed it up.  
“That's my name and don't wear it, either.” Chad raised his eyebrows at the two of them. “And if you see the guys from Soundgarden, and if Ben is hanging out with them, tell him he owes me money.”  
“How much?” asked Mia.  
“Eh, it's not important.”  
“Come on—” she coaxed him. Chad sighed.  
“Okay, he owes me twenty bucks, but add the caveat that he doesn't have to pay me back right away because he and I both are just out of high school.”  
“Are you really?” Lars raised his eyebrows at that.  
“Yeppers.”  
“Anyways, we have got to get going,” he added, flashing Mia a sweet grin. “We are having breakfast down by the water at Pike Place.”  
“Oh, have fun, kids.” Chad winked at them before returning to his room and closing the door before him.  
Lars tossed his hair back before stuffing his room key into the pocket of his jeans. The bottom hem of his shirt appeared to better fit his waist underneath his leather jacket, much to Mia's feeling pleasure: she kept her hand on his right hip under the hem of his jacket as they stepped out to the morning drizzle. The car from the previous day awaited them at the curb before the front step of the hotel. The driver held the door for them and Lars coaxed Mia into the back seat first; he followed her, which he accompanied with a stroke on her left knee all the while.  
He loomed close to her once the door of the car was closed: the smell of the embroidered leather making up the shoulders of his jacket tickled her nose.  
“Hello, my love,” he whispered.  
“Hello, darling,” she playfully retorted. “Where would you like to go this morning?”  
“Yeah, where would you two like to go this morning?” the driver called from the front seat.  
“To—and I keep forgetting that it's actually Pike Place Market, please,” Lars politely said.  
“Pike Place… oh, I know how to get there.”  
The engine turned over and they began to roll forward down the street.  
“Are James, Kirk, and Jason back at the hotel?” asked Mia.  
“They sure are,” replied the driver. “The two of you are just the first ones to wake up and call me up to take you to breakfast. And we were the first ones to show up there, too.”  
“I see.”  
Lars fingers crept her thigh and she snickered at the feel of it. The tips of his fingers slithered towards the inside of her thigh.  
“Stop—” she told him, setting a hand atop his; he kissed the side of her neck, the sweetest and most delicate of a kiss. He fluttered his lashes at her.  
“You are so cute,” she whispered. “You are just—just—just too cute for words.”  
“First I'm beautiful, then I'm gorgeous, then I'm sexy, now I'm just cute?”  
“Yes.”  
He scoffed and rolled his eyes.  
“When we get back to the room, we should make out again,” she suggested in a low voice. “Put on some Pink Floyd and just make love again on the bed.”  
“I have got to be at the venue, though,” he pointed out.  
“A little quickie, then. We could put on some Stones instead.”  
“We could still use the Floyd, though.”  
“Yeah, but you'd have to cut it short. What's the fun in cutting the Floyd short?”  
“That's true. And it would be rather odd to try to make out to 'Welcome to the Machine'.”  
“There is 'Have a Cigar', though.”  
“Kinky.”  
He peered out the window next to her head, and she turned to follow his gaze out towards the low, buttoned down brick buildings making up the neighborhood of Ballard. They meandered along the quiet streets until there was a small break in between the outside borders of both Ballard and downtown Seattle.  
At one point, Lars took a glimpse out the window next to him on the left and he moved his head about as if in search of something. He finally pointed out the window at one of the taller buildings lining the street. They pulled up to the stop sign for a moment long enough for Mia to examine the black and gold awning over the smoked glass front doors of the theatre.  
“Mia, check it out! It's the Moore!”  
“The Moore! What about it?”  
“That's where we are playing the next two nights. The rock opera Tommy was recorded there, too—the four of us can't hardly believe it, either.”  
“Where's Dave's band playing?”  
“Megadeth is playing—at Benaroya, I think is what it's called? It is—a few blocks from here, and that is as far as I know. I will have to ask Dave if and when we see him between now and the time of their show.”  
They turned to the right so as to head down the hill side towards the market, a series of long low buildings spanning out from a pair of tightly woven main buildings, the main one of which upheld a sign reading “PIKE PLACE MARKET” in large narrow bright red letters. They pulled up to the corner just across from the sign, about a block away from a small shop that appeared to be a bakery. Mia's face lit up when she spotted it down the block.  
“Lars, look!”  
He put his head next to hers to take a better look for himself and then flashed her a devilish grin.  
“How about we get some produce first?” he suggested. “And then we can have some sexy pastries later on.”  
“Sounds like a plan.”  
They both thanked the driver again and vowed to be back soon enough. Lars guided her across the pavement towards the entrance behind the sign into the main building. Amongst the crowd of people, vast stretching displays of all manner of ripe bright red apples, plump orange creamsicle colored peaches, and all manner of berries, and leafy green vegetables and tomatoes, all splayed along the floor towards a whole section dedicated to fresh fish and seafood, all of which were strewn with care over beds of ice. Lars patted his belly with one hand and helped Mia weave throughout the crowd with the other hand. She grinned at him as he led her to a series of blueberries and raspberries.  
He was like a little boy with the look of excitement upon his round, full face.  
“Shall we get some?” she asked him over the chatter of the crowd around them.  
“Yes, we shall,” he replied, his eyes gleaming. He held up two fingers to the female clerk behind the counter for the blueberries. She turned her head at the sight of some ripe, dark green English cucumbers. She flashed back on the night before and the feel of him inside of her mouth: she was eager to feel it again once he handed five dollars to the clerk and gestured for Mia to follow him.  
They wove past an elderly couple and a mother accompanied by a baby stroller to head to the fish; Mia took two steps and stopped right in her tracks. A sharp pain seared over the crown of her head from the back and towards the front. She felt herself falling over onto her side on the hard dirty floor. Everyone walked away from her and so she could not call out for help even if she wanted to do such a thing. She blacked out right there in the middle of the crowded market, while Lars disappeared into the crowd, and as far as the waning glimmers of consciousness in her knew, he was oblivious to what had happened to her.

She opened her eyes a crack and all she could see moving before her were blurry figures. Everything sounded so far away and hollow, as if she lay down at the bottom of the deepest hole in the earth.  
She closed her eyes again for a moment when Marcia's voice cut through the dark echo chamber around her.  
“—Mia?”  
She groaned, but not the way in which Lars always gave her those little pleasured groans. A sharp, searing pain spread over the crown of her head and towards her forehead. She grimaced and groaned, but something kept the pains from becoming too much to bear for her.  
“Mia?” Marcia called again, her voice coming in closer.  
“She's waking—” There was Ashley's voice, entering from her left.  
“Mia?” The voices all cleared up and came in closer until the next thing she knew, her surroundings were loud, filled with machine hums and blares and all manner of noises, and she had a dull nagging pain centered around the crown of her head. She peered about the room, the sterile white hospital room with amber light shining down from the overhead light on the ceiling, and the bed she lay in with the seafoam green blankets and the three fluffy pillows behind her back to prop her upright.  
“Mia!” Sonia declared from the foot of the bed.  
“What's—What's—” Her speech slurred and she couldn't think straight.  
“Mia, it's okay, we're all here,” Marcia told her in a soothing tone. “It's okay—you're safe.”  
She looked about the room once again to find it was only but the four of them in there.  
“Where's—Where's—” she demanded, her speech slipping and sliding as she tried to put words together.  
“Lars? He and the boys are up in Canada right now.”  
“Al—Already?” she stammered.  
“Yeah, you've—” Marcia cleared her throat and shifted her weight in her seat. “—you've been out cold for four days straight because the doctors were worried that if you woke up, you'd start hemorrhaging on your brain, so they kept you under until they—you know, they stopped it and patched you up.”  
“Wha—What—How?”  
“Mia, you got hit in the head pretty bad,” Sonia told her, “like a real gnarly gash on your head. The cops think there was something in that crowded market place was blunt enough and hit you hard enough to knock you out cold. The doctors said you have a concussion and they were hella worried that you might have sustained brain damage. You didn't, and they were able to save you, but they had to keep you comatose for a while so they could try and fix you.”  
“They told us that when you woke up that you're going to be confused as all hell and you might have a stutter in your speech, but that's all expected,” Marcia pointed out.  
“What—What—did he do?”  
“Who, Lars?” asked Marcia.  
“Ye—Yeah. Yeah.”  
“Lars saw you weren't behind him at Pike Place,” added Ashley, “and then he started looking around for you and you were nowhere to be seen. He ran back to his driver and told him what happened, and then the driver called the police and they started looking for you. The guys from a band—they're called Soundgarden, I think? They helped out in looking for you, until a kid named Ben, another kid named Jerry, and some elderly couple you guys ran by at the market all found you down by Alki Beach and you were just—hanging by a thread. The old man and Ben stayed by your side as Jerry called the cops and then he and the old lady told the whole story. Poor Lars was just terrified the whole time. He was really worried that something horrible happened to you. He was just hysterical when he saw you weren't behind him at Pike Place.”  
“He called up Sandra and told her what happened,” Sonia explained. “And then she told us, and when the cops said you were here at Virginia Mason, we boogied up here as fast as we could.”  
“How—How—How'd he—he call Sandra?” asked Mia, rubbing her left temple; the edge of gauze wrapped around her head brushed against the side of her fingers.  
“The donut box back at the hotel,” she replied. “He had to run back there to get ready for the show anyways, and then he found the box in his room and he got the idea to call her up, so he contacted the front desk to get a hold of Smell the Magic and then they hooked him up with Sandra's numbers.”  
“They dedicated a song to you, by the way,” said Ashley.  
“They—They did?”  
“Yeah. Megadeth did, too, because they were playing a couple of blocks from them. I guess it was a new song, too. James told the three of us he had been reading a book called Johnny Got His Gun and wrote a song based off of it, and yet they dedicated it to you that night because the lyrics fit the circumstances so well. I forget what it's called, though. Not 'My Darkest Hour', that was Megadeth's dedication to you.”  
“Lars also left his number with you,” Sonia pointed out, “and I put it in your purse over on the table at the side of the room so it's in a safe place.” She shook her head. “I can't get that image out of my head, though.”  
“What—” Mia started, but the pain in her head seared from where she was hit towards her forehead, thus stopping her in her tracks.  
“Once they found you on the beach,” she said, “and the medics took you here, he and the boys came in to visit you—they couldn't stay long because of the show. But Lars stayed behind until the three of us got here, and when we walked in, he was right next to you holding your hand. And when he saw me, he leaned into your face and said—something to you, and then he ran out of here because he had to be at the venue. I don't have a clue what he said, I don't speak Danish, but it gave me insight into him, though, especially when he told me he'll be back after the Canadian dates, which is soon, like they play for two nights and then they come home.”  
“Aside from those two other boys, it was practically all him doing most of the leg work, too,” Marcia added. “He's just—he's a gentleman. He's a total gentleman and just the biggest sweet heart.”  
“He's kinda cute, too,” said Ashley. “Cute and he's got a pretty nice body, too.”  
“Ugh, Ashley,” Marcia rolled her eyes at that and flashed her a teasing grin.  
“I think James is cute, too,” she continued. “Besides, you guys like Kirk and Jason, too.”  
“We do like Kirk and Jason,” Sonia agreed. “Especially Sandra. She likes Jason a lot, too.”  
“Does—Does Wayne know I'm here?”  
“As far as we know, no,” answered Sonia. “I called your parents, though, and they're gonna be up here—tomorrow, I think?”  
A knock on the edge of the door caught their attention. The nurse, a dark haired woman with her hair tied up on top of her head in a tight bun and dressed in soft blue scrubs, entered the room.  
“Ladies? Visiting hours are almost done,” she announced to them.  
“Okay, well she just woke up—” Marcia gestured to Mia, and the nurse's face lit up.  
“Oh, good! How's her speech?”  
“She's talking,” answered Sonia as she picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder, “and I guess her head's hurting, too, because she keeps like… rubbing her temple.”  
“That's a given. We're giving her just enough morphine to alleviate the pain and it's going to be hurting for a while because she did take quite the blow after all. But plenty of rest for the next couple of days and she'll be able to get out of here.”  
“Okay, good,” Marcia sighed, running a hand through her hair. “So now we can relax here in Seattle for the time being.”  
“You can relax, yes! How many fingers am I holding up?” She held her index finger to check Mia's vision.  
“Just—Just one.”  
“One! That's the song I was trying to think of,” Ashley declared as they started out of the room.


	14. Chapter 14

Mia had drifted off to sleep at one point during the night, but awoke when the nurses entered the room to test her blood, and to prop up her pillows, and to make sure the wound on the crown of her head was healing in the wake of surgery. But as the first rays of sunrise perforated the darkness, she was exhausted, and all she wanted to do was go back home, and be in Lars' arms all the while.  
Her tired mind pictured him laying right next to her on her right. He had his head resting upon the palm of his hand and so wavy tendrils of his hair dangled over his shoulder from the back of his head. His face resembled the full moon in the night sky with his smooth skin and the sweet round shape of his jaw and his eyes were like smooth glass. He lay on his side next to her with his hips cocked out a bit to emphasize the lovely shape of his body. She examined further down his body at the sight of a slight roll of soft fat around his waist, just prominent enough to give his hips an extra slight curve.  
“My beautiful boy,” she whispered, laying her hand down by her side as if beckoning him to hold hers; he glanced down at her hand and showed her a little warm smile.  
“When you get out of here, you and I should eat cake and make out under the moonlight,” he suggested.  
“Why the moonlight?” she asked.  
“Because I look like the moon to you.”  
“And may I ask how you know that?”  
“You have told me before. Remember? When you and I were getting close the first time?”  
She showed him a smile.  
“I see you're getting a little chubby,” she pointed out. He peered down at his waist and his smile tilted off to the side.  
“It's not much—just a few pounds, but it is all for you, my darling.”  
“Wait a minute. You just got a little bigger.”  
“I did?”  
He glanced down to see his belly poking out a little bit farther from his body. He lay his head down on the mattress next right to her hip and gazed on at her upside down.  
“I guess I did.” He fluttered his lashes at her and grinned at her upside down as his bangs drifted off from his brow. She watched him set his hands over the lower part of his chest; it was as if with every breath he took, he became bigger and rounder and fuller, and his arms appeared to grow more sinewy from the greatest amounts of strength. Mia licked her lips at the sight of him.  
“Who am I kidding—I want to touch you,” she told him. “Just run my hands all over your body.”  
“Then come on down here, baby. Touch me.”  
He slid his legs and lifted his knees up: the opaque skin on his body appeared so soft and delicate. She wanted to touch him, but her arms seemed to be glued down to the blankets around her. Lars was so gorgeous and tantalizing she almost couldn't stand it.  
“Touch me, my darling. Touch me. Feel me. Kiss me. Love me. Let's pull on each other's hair and eat other's cake. Come here, come to me, and love every single millimeter of me.”  
“Hey, sexy, why don't you just come up here towards me then?”  
“What's wrong? Can't move?”  
“Nope. And I want you. I want you all big and strong, and plump as a Christmas goose.”  
He then rolled over onto his left hip and sat upright for a second before he loomed over her ankles. His body had filled out but his limbs remained so slim and sinewy. He lowered his head to make his bangs fall back over his brow again, and showed her a devious little smirk.  
“I have got it,” he told her in a low voice, “and you so want it.”  
“I think I should say the same thing to you,” she retorted. He licked his lips and began to crawl towards her, all while keeping his head bowed to accentuate his brow and his cheek bones.  
“We are so doing this right now,” he whispered once he brought his face within mere inches of hers.  
“Yes, please,” she whispered back, closing her eyes.  
“Miss Panadera?” Lars' voice changed to that of a woman. Mia opened her eyes to find the nurse standing at the foot of her bed with a pink basin filled with water and a yellow loofah.  
“Yes?” she asked, her voice breaking.  
“We are so doing this right now,” she told her, rinsing and wringing out the loofah, “I need to give you a sponge bath.”  
She sighed when she realized that encounter with Lars was just a hallucination. She let the nurse peel off her hospital gown so as to expose the skin on her back and the series of subcutaneous cuts over her shoulders and down towards the center of her spine. The smooth, dampened sides of the loofah lovingly brushed against her skin, and the water ran down the curvature of her back. She relaxed the muscles in the high part of her back and her arms and shoulders as the nurse washed down her skin, and wrung out the loofah again. The nurse rinsed off her back again and that was when the dull, persistent pain in her temple returned.  
“We still have no idea what caused these cuts back here,” she confessed.  
“They don't—don't hurt,” Mia told her; her speech was starting to glue itself back together even if she had had very little sleep.  
“Well, that's good. We were worried they might be from broken glass because of how scattered they all are, but it's just hard to say. They're all surface level, anyways—”  
A knock on the door frame caught both of their attention. The nurse turned her head and nodded; Mia glanced up to see Lars poking his head into the room.  
“There—There he is,” she breathed out as the nurse wrung out the loofah once more.  
“Hi,” he greeted her in a low voice and with a nervous but relieved smile.  
“I'm almost done here,” said the nurse.  
“No, no, take your time,” he encouraged her as he stepped into the room; he wore the same leather jacket as the last time Mia saw him, but with a fitted black shirt this time. “But I got here as fast as I could, though.”  
“You are just a hero, though,” said the nurse as she ran the loofah down Mia's bare chest and around the curvature of her breasts, “you and those two boys.”  
“Ben and Jerry?”  
“Ben and Jerry, that was it.”  
“Can't forget the old man and the old lady, though,” he pointed out.  
“Ben and—the old man—stayed with me?” asked Mia.  
“They sure did. Ben and I got you out of the water and then he and the old man stayed by your side while you laid there on the beach. I noticed you were still breathing and so I told Jerry about it and then he and the old lady got help as fast as they could.”  
He ran two fingers over his right eye and sniffled.  
“Don't—” Mia sputtered out, her eye closing a bit from her aching temple.  
“Aw,” the nurse cooed as she wrung out the loofah once more.  
“I'm sorry, it's just—” He swallowed down his tears.  
“It's just—what?” Mia sweetly asked him.  
“I will tell you in a bit.”  
The nurse washed down the space between Mia's legs and the wound on her hip before giving the loofah one last rinse and propping up the pillow behind her back once more. She slipped the gown back over her body, and then picked up the water.  
“My head hurts,” said Mia.  
“Okay, I'll be back with something,” assured the nurse, and she headed out of the room. Once they were alone, Lars ambled towards her and brushed away another tear from his eye.  
“I should tell you,” he started in a near whisper. He took a seat on the edge of the bed next to her knee, in the exact spot as in her hallucination.  
“What's—What's that?”  
He swallowed again.  
“Almost two months ago—we were over in Sweden, on a tour bus. And at one point, we hit a patch of black ice and the bloody thing lost control. We rolled over onto the side and—our former bassist, Cliff, he was on the side that rolled over.”  
Mia clasped a hand to her mouth. Lars nodded his head.  
“Yeah. You can—pretty much figure out what happened after that. You know, with Jason being with us and everything.”  
He took in a deep sigh, his chest rising and falling as he came to terms with it right there.  
“I tell you this because we worried—you know—'here we go again.' We are just… barely coming off of losing our bassist and now there is the very real possibility that we could lose Mia.”  
He sniffled again and gazed into her eyes.  
“You know, we—” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “—well, I should say 'I', I have no clue if James or Kirk are aware of this in any given sense, but there is this pervading feeling of survivor guilt amongst us.”  
“Like—how?”  
“I feel like that... could have been me who was killed. Or James, or Kirk, for that matter. It very easily could have been one of us, and… Cliff was the one to go instead. What makes me rather raw about it is—is the fact we are having to be on tour. We are having to be on tour without him. No disrespect to Jason, or anything, he has been more than fantastic, but it's—it's—”  
“It's not—the same,” she finished for him.  
“It is not the same. And I am glad we're coming home, but we are going to be across the ocean not long after our little break here. It just… doesn't feel like enough time.”  
Mia reached out to touch his hand, which lay right next to her hip. He showed her a warm little smile.  
“You're—You're safe,” she told him.  
“So are you,” he replied in a voice so soft he may as well have breathed those words. Mia's temple ached but she recalled the hallucination she had had before the nurse walked into the room.  
“I had—a dream about you.”  
“You did? When?”  
“A little while ago. You were—laying right next to me. And you just looked so—so enticing.”  
The warm look on his face transformed into a little smirk.  
“Was I not wearing a shirt?”  
“No, you—weren't. And—And—it was as if every—breath you took—you got bigger.”  
“I got bigger?” he chuckled at that.  
“Yeah, like—chubbier. It was—kinda funny—kinda sexy, too.”  
Lars licked his lips and eyed her with that little smirk plastered over his face.  
“I'm getting hungry,” he told her in a low voice, “and—the cafeteria downstairs will be open soon. Is there anything that I can fetch for you?”  
“Waffles—blueberry if they—have them. With—lots of—butter on top.”  
“Funny, I was thinking of getting the same thing. And the big stack, too. You know—to—you know. There is just one issue.”  
“What's that?”  
“We cannot really—you know, make love because of that gauze atop your head.”  
“But we can—dine together—though.”  
“We can dine together, exactly. And I should also tell you that after our break, we go to Japan. And Kirk's birthday is then, too, he's turning twenty three.”  
“You want me to—bake him a cake?”  
Lars glanced up at the ceiling and cocked his head from side to side.  
“If it's not too much trouble.”  
“Of course. If I have to—phone it in to Marcia—and Sandra, then I'll do it. What flavor?”  
“Chocolate. With white frosting.”  
“It's a deal. Not even a—blow to the head could stop me.”  
“Because we would have our cake and eat it, too.” He leaned forward, and pressed his lips to her cheek, and then climbed to his feet. Mia watched him stuff his hands into his pockets as he stepped out to the corridor and headed down to the cafeteria to bring back breakfast. She closed her eyes and pictured him laying next to her again, even if it was for a short moment when the nurse returned to the room with pain pills in a cup.

Within minutes, Lars had returned to the room with two large plates and a cup of coffee, all of which he had put on a gray metal tray: both of plates carried large Belgian waffles, although Mia couldn't tell how many he had taken from the cafeteria downstairs. She could however, tell that they had come straight out of the waffle iron as the outsides were crispy and light brown: he had spread a few white knobs of melted butter over the top grating. The warm aroma of cooked blueberries filled the room within mere seconds. He set the plate down on her lap and handed her a metal fork before taking his seat on the edge of the bed next to her. The waffles were quite large, about the size of her hand from the base of her wrist to the tip of her middle finger.  
He used the side of his fork to slice through the corner of his first waffle: Mia could finally see that he had taken five of them, while he gave her four.  
“If you're still hungry,” she began, taking the corner off of the waffle on the top, “I'll give you one of mine.”  
“No, no,” he insisted after swallowing, “you have been asleep for four days. You need to eat more than I do, but thank you, though, for the sweet gesture, my darling.”  
She watched slough off another piece of waffle and run it around the melted butter before putting it into his mouth. She then followed his suit, and kept her eye on the soft delicate skin on the bottom half of his face all the while. She flashed back on her dream, how he was right there down by her feet and showing her that come hither look. He knew what she wanted, and she knew what he wanted. She watched him swallow and, before he said another word, she glanced down at his waist, hidden by his shirt and his leather jacket. How she longed to feel him and his soft skin again.  
Once she had swallowed down the bite of waffle in her mouth, she nibbled on her bottom lip, but it was in that split second when she realized her hunger. She dug into the waffles, tasting that light fluffy batter and those juicy blueberries embedded within, and mopping up the butter with every other bite.  
At one point, Lars set his plate down on his lap and leaned back against her right foot. He placed his hand in the space between her legs and closed his eyes.  
“Getting full?” she asked him, noticing he still had two whole bites of the last waffle left on the plate.  
“Yes,” he answered with his mouth packed. He tilted his head back so as to emphasize his swallowing of the bite: his luxuriant hair cascaded down from the back of his head and over the blanket covering her feet. He groaned inside of his throat, a prolonged low guttoral moan from inside of him, before sticking out his tongue and turning his head to her.  
He lowered his head and showed her that exact same come hither look as in her hallucination.  
“Baby, please, I took a blow to the head,” she told him, taking another bite of her waffles. “I'm injured. I want to so badly, but I can't.”  
He peered down at the final two bites resting upon his plate.  
“Actually I was wondering if—you could feed me these, if it wouldn't be too much trouble. You are nearly done, after all.”  
Mia sighed through her nose and then wolfed up her last bites of waffles and then set her plate on the bed next to her. She took his plate and his fork, and he leaned forward to be closer to her face. She inserted the tines of the fork into the first piece and then lifted it into his open mouth. He clamped down on the fork and pulled back his head to chew it. He closed his eyes and, much to her pleasure, he lifted the bottom hem of his shirt and revealed the lower part of his belly, that beautiful smooth skin over an ever so slight bump around his waist. She watched his fingers caress himself for a moment until he swallowed; she then picked up the last bite and fed it to him.  
The tips of his fingers wandered all around his waist until he unfastened his jeans. He unfastened his jeans and reached down into his underwear and began touching himself right there in front of her. Mia gasped.  
“Wha?” he asked with his mouth full.  
“Lars!” she declared in a hushed voice.  
“What? You are not in any state whatsoever to do it so I'm doing it myself.”  
She gaped at him but realized what he was doing. He was touching himself for her. He then leaned in closer to her face and kissed her on the mouth with his hand still down in his jeans: his lips tasted like butter and blueberries, but she couldn't ask for anything better, especially when he kissed her again, and again. She peered down at his waist, at the skin peeking out from under his shirt. She lifted her right hand and caressed that patch of skin with her index and middle fingers. He kissed her a fourth time and that time added a light brief gasp from the feel of her fingers on him.  
“That's all I'm going to do, baby,” she whispered, feeling the ache in her head disappearing.  
“Okay, darling,” he assured her in a low voice. “But I will stay here all day if I have to.”  
“Will you?”  
“Of course. I have nothing but time, anyways. I will be here by your side until that nurse says you can check out of here.”  
The nurse herself entered the room once again and Lars took his hand out of his jeans. He scrambled back towards the foot of the bed but she gave him a light little laugh.  
“No, no, it's okay,” she assured him, “we just think it's okay to take the gauze off of her head now.”  
“Oh, okay,” he breathed, running the back of his hand over his bangs and mouthing “phew!” The nurse giggled again and then leaned over Mia's head to peel off the gauze. She held still as it unraveled out from the crown of her head, and over her ears, and towards her forehead. Lars raised his eyebrows at the sight of her exposed head.  
“How do you feel?” asked the nurse.  
“Well, it feels like my head can breathe again,” answered Mia.  
“Without touching them, can you feel the gashes on your head?”  
She focused on the wounded feeling on the crown and on her forehead. There was an extra exposed feeling near the back as well.  
“Was—Was my hair cut?” she stammered.  
“Just a little bit, though,” replied the nurse. “The surgeons had to cut some of it to address the wound and save your brain—”  
“It will grow back, though,” Lars assured her.  
“It will grow back, yes,” the nurse echoed.  
“Although you may wanna wear a hat for a while,” he added.  
“Yeah, it's a—very tender part of your head now,” said the nurse, “simply because of the damage sustained and walking about in the sunlight will aggravate it. And it will be for some time, too. But we're in a nice part of Seattle, though. When you get out of here, you can go shop around for knit caps and things like that.”  
“When can I get signed out of here?” asked Mia, massaging her temple.  
“The next day or so—there's two women coming here soon from West Seattle to visit you, too, so you may want to hang tight for a little while longer.”  
“Two women?”  
“Yeah, an Olivia Starr and a Mikayla de la Garza, I think are their names? Ring any bells?”  
Lars raised an eyebrow.  
“Olivia and Mikayla.”  
Mia thought about it for a minute, the gashes on her head not helping matters in the least. Then she remembered.  
“Oh! Liv and Mike! Ashley's mom, and Marcia and Sonia's mom! I totally forgot they lived up here.”  
“I think I've heard of Olivia,” the nurse continued, “she's a reporter up here. Don't know about Mikayla, though.”  
“Well, the more, the merrier if I might say so,” said Lars with a little smirk.  
“Oh, stop,” Mia scoffed.


	15. Chapter 15

Lars used his free hand as his other held the cup of coffee, to hold onto Mia to help her downstairs to the front lobby. The nurses had given her a matte gray cane to walk with as her head started spinning once she climbed out of bed and took off the gown, and changed back into her clothes. He had signed Mia out of the hospital once the big glass doors slid open, and Olivia and Mikayla stepped in from the morning fog outside.  
Olivia Starr towered over both Lars and Mia, with those lovely reddish curls piled all over her head with some silvery gray tendrils embedded within, and pale milky skin from living up in Seattle most of her life. She had those long fingers, perfect for typing away on those typing machines in the television station, and dressed each of them with some kind of ring. Mikayla de la Garza, on the other hand, looked at both Lars and Mia in the eye underneath a short bob of solid black hair, still black as night despite her age and her background as a dancer in an old strip club in Georgetown that closed down by the time Sonia was born, and not a single line covering her pale face. Both women wore dark rain coats even though it didn't look like it would rain too hard that morning.  
“Oh, my God, Mia—honey,” said Olivia as part of their greeting; she was careful to put her arms around Mia's body, even though it was her head that ached more than her back or anything else on her body.  
“It's okay, Liv, it's just—my head that's been affected. I'm gonna need a few knit caps, though.”  
“Good reason to take you out then,” reassured Mikayla. She turned to Lars, who tossed back his hair and showed them both a sweet smile. “Oh, hello.”  
“Liv, Mike, this is Lars,” Mia introduced him, “Lars, this is Olivia—Ashley's mom—and Mikayla, Marcia and Sonia's mother. Or Liv and Mike as I call them.”  
“It's my pleasure.” Lars bowed his head out of politeness when Olivia knitted her eyebrows together at him.  
“I thought—Mia, I thought you were with Wayne?”  
She hesitated right then. Wayne had been out of mind to her that she had forgotten about keeping the lie between her, Ashley, Marcia, and Sonia. Lars turned to her with a curious expression on his face.  
“Wayne was—before you,” she explained, keeping the lie intact.  
“Oh, I see,” he nodded and tossed his hair back once again.  
“I'm sorry it didn't work out between you two,” Mikayla consoled her, “and I know the pain, too. I broke up with Mr. Bennett—my first husband—after Sonia entered kindergarten, and it's a miracle I pulled through that. Well, since you're up and walking around, how 'bout we take you two out for breakfast? There's this little brunch place a few blocks from here that Olivia was telling me about on the way over here—”  
Lars and Mia glanced at one another. They had just eaten breakfast, and it was nothing light, but he raised his eyebrows at her as if he was telling her “of course I have room for another round.”  
“Er—I don't see why not,” said Mia, feeling her face grow warm. “I have been asleep for four days so I could use something to gnosh on.”  
For a split second, she believed Lars flashed her a little wink and then followed it up with a devious smile. He took a drink of his coffee and then put his arm around her once they headed outside to Olivia's gray sedan in the front of the parking lot. He set his coffee on the roof to assist her into the front seat of the car, and then took his coffee back before taking the seat behind her and next to Mikayla.  
“So where is it again, Liv?” she asked, turning over the engine. “I haven't been up here in a while and you did tell me it was new…”  
Mia phased out the conversation between the two of them when it dawned on her: they were actually going out for breakfast after she and Lars had just had breakfast. She could already feel herself getting stuffed full, but she imagined Lars just packing it in there at the table right in front of her friends' mothers. But on the other hand, he was scared for her life and she had been asleep for four days straight. The two of them had to eat and stuff themselves silly.  
They wound through the streets of Seattle towards the short, low restaurant on the corner, a few blocks from Pike Place. Mikayla took the spot closest to the door and, after she and Lars helped Mia out of the front seat, the four of them ambled to the glass front doors and the cozy, warm lit lobby of the restaurant. The waitress guided them to a booth next to the window and Lars took his seat next to the window sill so the light bathed over his head and his wavy hair: his body from the chest down was obscured by the table. Mia sat down next to him and leaned her cane against the edge facing out to the aisle next to them; Olivia and Mikayla took their seats across from them.  
The two mothers ordered coffee for themselves, while Mia asked for apple juice and Lars a cup of black tea.  
“You just had coffee,” she pointed out to him once the waitress stepped away.  
“What? I like my tea,” he insisted, brushing back a lock of hair from his face. He flashed her a slight wink again and then she realized what he was doing.  
“I really just admire your accent, Lars,” Olivia remarked, “are you—European?”  
“Straight out from the heart. Denmark.”  
“Don't think I've met anyone from Denmark,” confessed Mikayla, “like I swear you were from like back East somewhere.” Right at that moment, the waitress returned with their drinks.  
“Yeah, for a second, I thought you were from like Boston or Staten Island,” added Olivia as she poured half and half into her coffee. She picked up her spoon and stirred. Meanwhile, Lars let his tea steep in the small white china cup as he skimmed over the menu on the table top before him.  
“I guess it's not the first time I have been mistaken for—a little American,” he admitted with a sly grin at Mia; she giggled at him as she took a sip of her juice. “Will you ladies please excuse me? I have to use the men's room. Be careful, Mia—oh—you got it okay? Okay—”  
Lars slid out from in front of Mia, and she returned to her seat, breathing through her mouth to ease the dizzy feeling inside of her head. Olivia and Mikayla showed her knowing glances.  
“Mia,” said Olivia with a glimmer in her eye.  
“What?” she asked.  
“Uh-huh.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Well, first of all, he's a total stud,” said Mikayla, “he's sweet. Something about Wayne bothered me, I don't know what it was, either. But he seemed to treat you like you owed him something. He, on the other hand, doesn't carry that—that sense of entitlement. And then there's that accent. God, girl, that accent is so sexy.”  
“And then there's that hair,” commented Olivia.  
“Oh, that hair. I have never seen hair like that on a man before. Just a beautiful boy. Beautiful Danish boy—and he's Danish, too! You never meet people from Denmark. Well, I never have, anyways.”  
Mia snickered and rolled her eyes. She supposed it was for the best: if the mothers of her friends thought he was attractive, then she must have struck gold with Lars. He soon returned to the table to take off his coat and show off his sinewy thighs and his lovely body to the three of them: Mia spotted the bottom hem of his shirt a tiny bit more loose and she knew he had made a little room for round two. She lifted herself out of her seat to let him back into his spot next to the window.  
Both women across from them ordered scrambled eggs, a couple of strips of bacon, and hash browns; Lars asked for a Denver omelette with toast while Mia asked for French toast and sausage.  
“I've been asleep for four days,” she told them with a shrug.  
“Then indulge, honey pie,” Lars advised her, taking a drink of his tea. Mia felt her face grow warm again at the sound of him referring to her as “honey pie” in front of Olivia and Mikayla.  
“Aren't you going to put some sugar in there?” she asked. “Sugar or cream?”  
“Cream in tea? No way!” He looked offended at that. “Sometimes I will do a small dribbling of sugar in my tea, but not always.”  
“Dribbling?” she echoed.  
“Dribbling—cubing, whatever.”  
Olivia chuckled at his attempt to grasp the English language. He stared across the aisle to the couple at the tiny table before the bar. Mia followed his gaze and, careful not to make her head spin anymore, turned to him again.  
“What'cha looking at?”  
“That man over there is eating French toast. Looks delicious, Mia.”  
“She's gonna have fun,” cracked Mikayla.  
“She is going to have fun,” Lars reiterated before taking another drink of tea. Within minutes, their food arrived and the whole table filled with the warm smells and flavors of breakfast. Even though they had eaten those blueberry Belgian waffles before, Mia was ravenous right then, eager to wolf down her French toast and her sausage links before Olivia and Mikayla could say anything else. At one point, she picked up a whole sausage and held it on the tines of her fork before her mouth. She turned to Lars and they locked eyes. She bit down on one end of the link, and he licked his lips.  
He sloughed off a piece of his omelette and did the same as her, holding the bite in front of her mouth. But he gazed into her eyes as he inserted the fork into his mouth. She watched his pupils dilate at the sight of her and at the feel of those smooth eggs inside of his mouth. The four of them ate in silence, until at one point, as he reached the end of his omelette, Lars closed his eyes and rested his elbow on the table next to the edge of his plate. Mia could hear those little groans inside of his throat; she was starting to feel quite full herself with all the French toast and those sausages.  
“Getting full, little man?” asked Mikayla.  
“Mm-hmm,” he replied with his mouth full. He sloughed off another piece from the omelette and kept at it until there was nothing left. He hesitated before his small plate of toast, two large slices of bread, both of them cut in half and toasted until nice and crispy.  
“Don't stuff yourself,” Olivia warned him.  
“It's so good, though!” he insisted, picking up one half of the bread and smearing strawberry jelly on one side. Strawberries.  
Mia flashed back on her feeding him those strawberries. She pictured herself feeding other things when they got alone again. She watched him eat all four of those pieces of bread until the last morsel of crust entered his mouth.  
The waitress soon returned to give them their bill; Olivia glanced down at the total and nodded her head.  
“I got this, don't worry,” she assured them.  
“I should call Trent, too,” added Mikayla, “tell him we're up here and we're—we're with the kids, too.”  
“I forget you're with him now,” noted Olivia, picking up the bill. Lars lowered his head and brought a hand to his chest.  
“—mmm, pardon me.”  
When she knew they weren't paying attention to them, Mia slid her hand underneath the hem of his shirt to feel the skin on his belly, still very soft but now stretched taut a bit to carry all of the food he had eaten that morning. He was intensely warm to the touch, too. Once Mikayla and Olivia had climbed to their feet to pay the bill and call whoever Trent was, he glanced over at her with just his eyes.  
“Be gentle,” he told her in a low voice. “Behage.”  
Careful not to bring attention from the people around to what she was doing, Mia moved her hand in small circles over his navel, and then moving out towards his pelvic bones. The expression on his face stayed the same but he licked his lips, his tongue slithering out from the inside of his mouth, from one corner to the other, as she gave him a light rub right under the table in the restaurant. She reached the top of his jeans and, using her index finger and her thumb, she unfastened the button on his jeans. He closed his eyes and a sweet smile crossed his face: she noticed the flesh underneath his chin starting to fill out, and his smile only made it fill out even more.  
Olivia returned to leave a tip for the waitress.  
“Alright, c'mon, kids,” she beckoned them. Mia jerked her hand back and reached for her cane, and was as ginger as possible to climb to her feet without making her head spin any more. Lars eased out of the seat and, once he put his jacket back on, stood to his feet next to her with his hand on his belly.  
“Had enough?” Olivia playfully asked him.  
“Oh, yes,” he choked out; Mia knew he was absolutely stuffed. That little bump under his shirt said it all.  
“Wait, did you seriously unbutton your pants?” asked Mikayla with a light chuckle, pointing down at the edges of his jeans poking out from underneath his shirt.  
“Yeah, and—”  
And at that moment, Lars' open mouth let out a loud, hairy belch that caught everyone's attention. Mikayla and Mia both gaped at him, while Olivia and three other people burst out laughing. He cupped his hands over his mouth and his face turned as red as a tomato.  
“I beg your pardon, young man,” declared an older gentleman at the bar.  
“Oh, no, excuse me, that was just—that was just—that came out of nowhere,” Lars sputtered, lowering his hands to redo his jeans. Once they started out of the restaurant into the overcast, Mia used her free arm to hold him all the way out to the car: despite having the tips of her fingers on his right side, his whole belly felt warm to the touch, even from under his shirt and his jacket. He was warm and soft to the touch, and stayed warm and soft to the touch even as the two women took Mia out shopping for knit caps. The warmth inside of him remained even as they returned to Olivia's house in Queen Anne, because there was no way Mia could go straight back home to Portland with her head in that condition.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 26: Mia had regained a great deal of her strength by the middle of the afternoon, and at that point, she was growing hungry again. Olivia had left to make an errand, whereas Mikayla laid down in the small bedroom in the basement for a little nap and Lars himself was down the hall. She thought about what she could make for herself as she had eaten so much that morning, but she wanted to make something with the food Olivia had in the house. The three of them had helped her lay down on the plush, cozy couch in the living room and at one point, once she was alone in the front of the house, she had unhooked and taken off her bra to better relax there. She rolled onto her side and thought about what kinds of meat could be in the kitchen: all she had eaten were breads and sugar and it could not suffice after sleeping for four days.  
Mia lifted herself off of the plush, cozy couch in the living room and, picking her cane off of side of the coffee table, ambled into the spacious kitchen and towards the white refrigerator nestled in one corner.  
She opened the door to find half of a pork tender loin sitting on one shelf. She wondered about spices in the cupboards; once she took the meat out of the refrigerator and placed it onto the counter next to the stove top for thawing, she searched through the cupboards for a salt shaker, a pepper grinder, and perhaps some paprika. She was going to make a little chorizo for herself and for Lars if he showed his face in the front of the house again.  
Mia spotted a heavy, cast iron skillet in one of the lower cupboards next to the sink and set it on the stove all while gripping onto the cane to steady her balance.  
There was a spice rack inside the drawer next to that cupboard, and she spotted the phials of ground sea salt and fresh ground black pepper corns at the front. She picked those before searching through the other jars for the one that caught her eye.  
Lemon grass, cinnamon, onion powder, garlic, rosemary, cloves… fresh ground paprika!  
She picked the phial of paprika out of the rack and closed the cupboard door, and stood to her feet and began the search for sharp knives. Once she found a knife, she turned up the heat under the skillet to bring it up to temperature.  
She leaned the cane against the center island to slice up the pork loin into slender medallions atop a wooden board: using the same knife, she sliced those medallions into finer pieces, and those pieces into even finer pieces, and then sprinkled the salt, pepper, and paprika over every part of those pieces. She then picked them up and slid them into the hot skillet. She rinsed off the cutting board and the knife, and then washed her hands with haste. Soon the whole room was filled with that warm aroma of seasoned meat cooking.  
Mia spotted a wooden spoon next to the stove and stirred the meat in the skillet for a moment.  
“Thought I smelled something delicious sizzling in the kitchen,” he said from behind her. She turned around at the sight of Lars, back in his Motorhead shirt and jeans from earlier, but tossing his wet hair back from his face.  
“Ah, so you were taking a shower,” she replied, returning to the skillet for a moment to stir the meat once more.  
“Yeah, my driver should be coming by soon to drop off my clothes just for a little change.”  
He sniffled the air again before ambling towards her; she felt him peeking over her shoulder.  
“Is that ground beef?”  
“So close, my dear.” She took a step back so he could have a better look at the skillet. “Chorizo. Coarsely chopped pork loin, smoked and seasoned with a little kiss of paprika to absolute perfection, and then made into a sausage. I like it right in between picante and dulce, so there's that little kick of spice but it's still rather sweet. I have always found it to be the most sensual of the encased meats.”  
“Encased?” He raised an eyebrow.  
“Encased. As in—something is encased in this very room here. And… I have always found ours—Puerto Rican—chorizo the most sensual of all Latin chorizos.”  
Lars' tongue slithered out of his mouth from one corner to the other.  
“Are you hungry?” she asked him in a low voice.  
“Famished. It is as if I haven't eaten all day.”  
Mia dipped the spoon into the sizzling ground pork in the skillet and lifted up a spoonful. She held her hand under the spoon and blew on it four times; keeping her hand under the head of the spoon, she brought it to his mouth. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth to take in his sample. He tugged his head back and let go of the spoon, not leaving a trace of chorizo on the head of the spoon.  
“What do you think?” she asked him in a near whisper. A soft groan emerged from the inside of his throat; he kept his eyes closed the whole entire time until he swallowed.  
“Like you're doing the salsa on my tongue and making your way down to my stomach and then to my genitals.”  
He loomed closer to her face as if beckoning a kiss from her, but he merely hung there before her.  
“I want you,” he whispered; his lips were bright pink, almost red, from the paprika. “No—I want to be you.”  
“You want to be me?”  
“So much. I want to do the salsa inside of you.”  
“And I want to do—whatever dance they have in Denmark in you.”  
He giggled at that and then planted his lips onto hers for two kisses, and then dropped his mouth to underneath her chin and down the side of her neck.  
“Lars—Lars, querido, I need to tend to this because it could burn,” she advised him. He lifted his head and gazed into her eyes.  
“Don't want that to happen—” he noted. “—skat.”  
“I don't think I saw any tortillas in the refrigerator—could you take a look for me, please?”  
“Of course, darling.”  
He bowed away from her, and stepped to the refrigerator door, and poked his head inside for a moment.  
“Well?” she asked, giving the chorizo another stir. He lifted his wet head out from the inside of the refrigerator and held up a package of small flour tortillas the size of the palm of his hand.  
“Street tacos, my darling.” He tossed the tortillas to her and she caught them with her free hand next to her hip. He made a quick search through the cupboards for a pair of plates and took down two white ceramic plates from the shelf next to her head. She took out two of the tortillas and rested them atop the plate closest to her. She scooped up some of the chorizo and spread it over the tortillas over she moved onto his plate.  
“I should tell you this,” he began, heading back to the refrigerator for sour cream, “Kirk has a crush on Marcia.”  
“I thought so,” she replied, taking the skillet off the heat and moving it on the back burner.  
“Well, fuck. But see, here is the thing: he also has got a crush on Sonia. And me, too.”  
She gaped at him. “Uh-oh.”  
“Yeah, that's my thought, too.” He closed the door with his hip. “And I guess—I guess anyways—your friend Ashley has a little fancy for me, too.”  
“Well, you are quite the beauty after all,” she said, reaching for her plate.  
“Speak for yourself. That night in the hotel—God, I have never felt more alive—”  
“Or full for that matter.”  
He flashed her a smirk and opened the drawer in front of him.  
“Have you seen any spoons? Not spoons as in that one right behind you, but an actual spoon.”  
“Er—I think next to you.”  
“Oh, I see now.”  
He found a large metal spoon to scoop a bit of sour cream over his chorizo, and then they made their way to the table in the next room.  
Mia swore he was going to have an orgasm upon his first bite. He rested the side of his head in his hand and a soft blush crossed his face from the paprika.  
“I should tell you—” he started after swallowing, “—when you were knocked unconscious, you know, because I couldn't eat as much as I could—during the two Seattle shows and our Canadian dates, I did not have as much in me.” The image of her first show and the warm glow over his face afterwards flashed through her mind.  
“Did you get all sweaty?”  
“Very much so. I looked like about I look right now with my wet hair. And I was tired, too. At the end of the last Seattle show, I thought, 'I need some fucking oxygen, man.'”  
Mia paused, thinking about where he was going with this.  
“So—you need me.”  
“I do. I need you. I need your hand on my stomach, I need your touch on my nether regions, and more importantly, I need your love.”  
Mia swallowed down her last bite of chorizo there on the plate and examined the warm blush over his face. The chorizo was working its wonders on him in spite of the sour cream. He needed to eat more and she needed to eat more. She needed him in the palm of her hand right then and two tortillas with chorizo atop would not suffice either of them.  
“Would you like some more?” she asked him in a gentle voice.  
“I was hoping you would ask that,” he answered with that little smirk returning once again.  
She took his plate and served him up more tortillas with chorizo and a small dollop of sour cream over the top. She served some more for herself as well, and they continued to eat until there was none left. At that point, Lars leaned back in his chair and rested his hands over his stomach. Mia crouched down to next to him to undo his jeans for him.  
“How do you feel right now?” she asked him in a gentle tone.  
“I feel born ready,” he answered in a low croak of a voice.  
She kissed his warm neck and gazed into his green eyes.  
“I will be—right back, quicker than in two rhythms of a Motorhead song,” she told him, glancing down at his shirt for a split second.  
“I will be right here thinking of making love to you to a Motorhead song,” he retorted.  
She grabbed her cane and ambled down the hall to the door of the downstairs bedroom. She knocked on the panel three times, followed by several times in no particular pattern. The door swung open and Mikayla poked out her head from the dim room.  
“Yes, my dear?” She rubbed her eyes and sniffled.  
“Do you have anything sexy on hand?”  
“Like—lingerie?”  
“Yes.”  
Mikayla blinked several times, and then she realized what Mia was asking her.  
“Mia, honey—who needs lingerie when—you know, I can see you've got your girls hanging out? Save the lingerie for later on down the road. Is Liv home?”  
“No.”  
“Okay. So for now, strip. Strip for him. Strip for that naughty boy.”  
She let out a low sigh and then bowed her head. Mia headed back down the hall to the kitchen and the table where Lars had his hands behind his head. She lay her cane against the side of the chair, and then reached down and peeled off her top. Her bare breasts hung out for him. He licked his lips at the sight of her.  
“Come here, lover,” she whispered, setting her shirt on the chair and climbing onto his lap.  
“What about your head, though?” he asked her, his eyelids drooping.  
“So what,” she whispered into his face, gripping onto the collar of his shirt with one hand and onto the side of his face with the other. She leaned forward to kiss his forehead. “So fucking what.”  
“'So fucking what,' I should write that down—” He was cut off by Mia shoving her tongue down his throat. He snapped his eyes closed as she made out with him right there on the chair in front of the table.  
“I'm—going to get you—so fat,” she whispered in between kisses. She let go of him right then. That whisper came from somewhere, somewhere from deep within her. Those dreams she had, the way she looked at him upon his stuffing himself, the way she made him eat anything and everything, it was all there. She dropped her hand to his shirt and lifted the bottom hem. That soft warm skin, so luxuriant and delicate. She was about to run her fingers down under the top of his underwear when he pushed her off of him.  
Mia stumbled onto her feet and staggered around the table. Lars' chest heaved and then he showed her a deviant grin.  
“You wanna fatten me up, is that what you said?” he repeated.  
She swallowed, realizing what she had just said to him.  
“Yes. Like the little piggy you are.”  
He stood to his feet, and reached down for the hem of his shirt, and removed it right then. She gazed on at his body, slender and smooth from the soft soap in the shower down the hall. The hair on his chest and down his belly stood on end from being cleaned and from being aroused.  
“Good luck with that,” he teased, lunging for her and throwing his shirt onto his chair. She dove into the living room and landed on her back on the couch. Her head spun in circles from the sudden movements but she didn't care, especially once he tackled her feet and crawled on top of her. His tongue lapped away at every side of both of her breasts, and then he stuck his lips onto the indentation of her chest right over her right breast.  
She felt him shifting and stirring below her waist. He was doing most of it, but she knew they weren't just making love right then.  
She could only see his green irises, those lovely green irises gazing back into her. She could feel the heat of his body, now extra warm from the chorizo, and she could smell the paprika on his breath. She couldn't see or smell anything more than his face looming before her with his mouth gaping open. She relaxed right there as they moved about on the soft couch cushions. They were the only ones in the front of the house, but she released and let loose right there underneath his warm body.  
He soon lifted himself off of her and wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand.  
“You still wanna—?” he asked her, his voice breaking.  
“Yes,” she whispered. He loomed before her with his jeans still undone. She examined the little bump coming in on his lower belly.  
“Come at me,” he challenged her. “Shut me up and make me bigger.”  
“I will shove it down your throat if I have to,” she warned him.  
“Shove what down his throat?” a voice behind them asked. Lars turned at the sight of Mikayla leaning against the side of the entrance into the living room with her arms folded over her chest and a cunning grin upon her face. He yelped out and jerked onto the back of the couch.  
“What—how long have you been standing there?” he sputtered, his fingers quivering as he buttoned up his pants.  
“About ten seconds,” she replied, “but still. I'm curious. Mia, what are you going to shove down his throat?”  
“Er—” Mia started. “Cake?”  
“Cake?” he echoed.  
“Cake!” Mikayla completed the echo. “Are we talking—birthday cake?”  
“Erm, yes! Kirk's birthday's coming up and I'm, er, going to be making the cake.”  
“Oh, yeah, that's right,” Lars remembered, running his fingers through his hair. He peered about the living room. “Where did I put my shirt?”  
“It's in the kitchen, and not that I'm complaining, either.” Mia shot upright and planted a little kiss next to his belly button.  
“Of course you aren't,” he retorted, sliding off of the couch.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "In touch with the ground, I'm on the hunt, I'm after you. Smell like I sound, I'm lost in a crowd, and I'm hungry like the wolf. Straddle the line in discord and rhyme, I'm on the hunt, I'm after you. Mouth is alive, juices like wine and I'm hungry like the wolf."  
> \- “Hungry Like the Wolf”, Duran Duran

Olivia had returned to the house shortly after the sun had set, and she brought home fried chicken for the four of them. Mia and Lars told her about their encounter on the couch on the living room and she showed them both a big grin the whole entire time; she raised an eyebrow when he added that they had eaten homemade chorizo just before hand.  
“Well, I'm glad the two of you have found a union—” She eyed Lars, who picked off pieces of fried chicken breast and inserted them into his mouth one by one. “—through each other's tongues. They do say the key to each other's heart is via the stomach after all.”  
He shrugged as he slipped in another piece of juicy white chicken with golden brown crispy skin. Mia felt a little tap on her knee and peered down at Mikayla handing her a small diaphragm, which by the look of it, appeared to be brand new. Once Lars took another bite, she took the diaphragm and slipped into her jeans pocket.  
“I dunno about 'heart,'” he said in a playful tone; Mia tapped the back of her hand against his shoulder.  
“Oh, come on,” she scoffed.  
“Lars is a little heart breaker, Mia,” Mikayla wagged her finger at her. “You gotta straighten this boy out.”  
“I dunno about 'breaker' or 'straighten,' either,” he confessed, setting down the chicken bones and beginning on his mashed potatoes.  
“Oh, come on!” insisted Mia. He brought a hand to his mouth to stifle his laugh.  
“I'll tell you what,” he started, once he swallowed down the bite of potatoes, “when I'm as stuffed as a Christmas goose here, you and I should go into the back of the house and play around a little bit.”  
“Well, you're not gonna get very far if you keep talking, now are you, big boy?” Mia reached under the table to pat his belly; he dropped his hand down to his waist to protect himself from her touch.  
“Yeah, there's plenty of potatoes and gravy here to go about,” said Olivia, gesturing to the container of those creamy off white potatoes and the neighboring container of light brown gravy, the latter of which had a little kiss of spices embedded. She picked up the silver spoon and lifted a large scoop of potatoes onto his plate, right on top of his current helping.  
“Eat up,” Mia whispered into his ear.  
Among the three women, they split up each of the containers of food enough to where it sufficed them, but Olivia and Mia both gave him enough in his next helpings to stuff him full. At the last bite of his third helping of corn, and he had cleaned his plate all the while, Lars leaned back in his chair while tilting his head back to show Mia his throat.  
“There's one more piece of chicken left,” Mikayla announced, picking up a chicken wing.  
“God, no—I can't,” Lars blurted out with his mouth crammed full with corn. He waved his hands about to stop her in her place.  
“Oh—come on,” Mia pleaded, laying her hands on his right thigh. “Please?” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. He swallowed down the bite of corn and parted his lips a bit.  
“I can't eat another bite, darling. And I already ate a ton from this morning, too.”  
She leaned in and kissed him on the side of the neck.  
“Please?” she asked him in a soft whisper of a voice. “You and I can split it, and I'll give you a nice little belly rub afterwards.”  
“Mia—” She turned her head to look at Mikayla gesturing to the opened button up collar on her shirt. She mouthed the word “strip” to her. Mia licked her lips and gripped onto the bottom hem of her shirt, and peeled it off of her body, right in front of Olivia and Mikayla. Lars stared at her breasts, both nice and round and looming right there right next to him, protected by her bra but exposed just for him; he raised his eyebrows at her. She pressed her lips to his, tasting the corn and potatoes on his mouth; somewhere inside of there was the kick of black pepper and fresh paprika from the chorizo appetizer from earlier that afternoon.  
“How about—we go back there now?” he suggested. Mia stroked the side of his face and ran his finger down his chest before she took a glimpse up at Olivia, who wiped her mouth with the napkin and showed them both a small smile.  
“Have fun, kids,” she answered in a soft voice.  
Mia returned to him and yanked him out of his chair. He stumbled a bit as they hurried down the hall to the back of the house and the laundry room; right across from the washer and dryer stood a small door. Behind the door stood a small dimly lit room, a loft, right under the slant of the roof. There was a twin bed nestled in one corner with a plain white comforter and two minute ivory white pillows; next to the bed stood a spindly nightstand with a stubby lamp with a black base in the shape of a pine cone and an emerald green lamp shade. Lars shut the door behind him and Mia reached into her pocket for the diaphragm, and then kicked off her jeans, leaving them there on the floor.  
“Is this Ashley's room?” he asked, dropping his pants and letting them gather around his ankles before the door. He pressed two fingers to his mouth and then dropped them down to his chest with a warm, satisfied smile on his face. Mia clicked on the lamp, which bathed the room in pale yellow light, and slipped on the diaphragm.  
“Not that I know of,” she answered, sashaying towards him and laying her hands on his shoulders and kissing him on the lips.  
“Let's take it slow,” he suggested, reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. “I overdid it some today. All that chicken and chorizo and—mmm—” She dropped her hands down his chest to the bottom part of his shirt.  
“Okay—querido.” The straps of her bra started to slide down her shoulders, and she backed away from him, and took a seat on the foot of the bed. The cups fell into her lap and she let the straps fall off all the way. She lifted his shirt to reveal his belly, now firm and with a slight roundness from all the food he had eaten that day, and pressed her lips to the line of hair running down from his chest to the waist of his underwear.  
“Cerdito,” she whispered in between kisses, “gordo—pequeño cerdito.”  
Lars held onto her shoulders as she dropped down to his waist and stuck the tip of her tongue into his navel. He gasped when she peeled away the band of the underwear.  
“Vete aqui, papacito rico,” she whispered, pressing her lips to the skin above his genitals. “Su pequeño cerdito. Eres muy sexy. Yo te quiero mucho.”  
“Jeg—oh—” He clasped his hands to his bare belly and dove onto the bed next to her. He was about to crawl towards the pillows when she held onto both cheeks of his butt and squeezed the tips of her fingers into his flesh. He squeaked out like a little piglet and rolled onto his back to face her straight on. She lifted the hem of his shirt to run her fingers down the curvature of his belly.  
“Tu ternura me encanta,” she said in a low voice. “Te quiero mas suave.”  
“I—I—Jeg ved ikke hvad jeg skal sige lige nu,” he breathed out.  
She kissed his neck and then stared into his eyes.  
“Besame, papacito,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his. “Bailamos?”  
“Elske med mig, skat,” he whispered back; she peeled off his underwear all the way. “Jeg vil have dig.”  
She straddled his bare hips and began to ride him right there. They stared into each other's eyes as she shifted from side to side and then back and forth. That warm blush returned to his face; her head started to spin again with the gyrations but the one thing she cared about was giving it to him. She focused on his eyes, those green irises and those pupils growing fuller and larger as she rode him more and more; her gaze moved onto the rest of his face and then his hair. His chest heaved with each movement, growing more and more breathless every few seconds, and then she fell over his body; she loomed over his chest in a push up position.  
“Seré tu amante esta noche,” she breathed into his flushed face. She knew he couldn't understand her, but she said it anyway.  
“Sit on my face,” he blurted out. She chuckled and ran her finger down the soft skin on his left cheek.  
“Room for dessert, I see,” she taunted. Mia hoisted her protected clitoris off of him and took off the diaphragm so he put his tongue inside of her. She placed her knees on either side of his head and he slipped his tongue into that space between her legs.  
“Eat—” she grunted, feeling his smooth tongue slither around the edges. She glanced down at his face, the bottom half of which was buried inside of her crotch. “Come, chico hambriento.”  
Her head spun even more but she held her position right there above his head. At one point, his eyes popped open and they locked a gaze just long enough: her head spinning became too much to bear and then the memory returned to her in a flash.  
“Lars—” she grunted. “Lars, stop.” He removed his tongue and gazed up at her with his eyebrows raised.  
“What? What is it?”  
“I have to be back at work,” she whispered to him.  
“What! When?”  
“In two days.”  
“Oh, Goddammit.” He leaned back to show her his throat and his Adam's apple; she climbed off of him and lay down on her side next to him. She could feel beads of sweat forming on her bare back, but when she stroked his chest and the bare flesh on his belly, he felt bone dry. He stared back at her with his mouth hanging open, out of breath.  
“You're hot,” he pleaded. “You are just so hot… I need you!”  
“But I have to get that cake baked for—for Kirk, remember?”  
“Well, yes. It's just—”  
“I know, baby. But I promise you once the cake is baked, you and I will have our time alone again.”  
He licked his lips.  
“Do you still have that diaphragm?” his voice broke on the last word.  
“Yes, right here.” She gestured to the little disc laying on the comforter between them.  
“You know, you were—over me on your hands and knees like an animal. Let's have some more fun while we're still here, my love.” He showed her a little grin, his cheek bones still warm and rosy.  
“Oh, I see what you want,” she teased him. “You are the master after all. Also, I am the one who's hot? You're the one who ate all that chorizo earlier.”  
She slipped it back on and climbed up onto her hands and knees at the foot of the bed.  
“I'm hotter than that chorizo, skat,” he taunted her, rolling off the bed and running around towards the end. “So much hotter than that chorizo.”  
“Shut up. Just—shut up. Shut up and fuck me. Fuck me right now.”  
He gripped onto her love handles and thrust forward onto her. She closed her eyes to better feel every hit.  
“Oh, yes—yes—si—si, papacito! Si!”  
He hit harder and harder each time, until one point, he leaned over her back to hold onto her shoulders. She felt his head lay onto her back but he kept going for another minute. He was in control after all. Sweat ran down her back and down her sides, but with each and every push, every hit on her protected clitoris, her heart pounded away inside of her chest and she made little gasping noises with each thrust. When he stopped, he huffed and puffed and gave her one last slap on her bare naked butt before standing upright.  
She rolled over onto her back with her legs spread open.  
“Would my little boy like a little blow?”  
“Behage. Please.”  
She scrambled forward back into a push up position, and put her mouth around his dick. It was just like the night in the hotel but this time they were alone in the back room of a house, and Olivia and Mikayla knew what they were doing; she sucked him harder than that night.  
“Yes—yes—yes, that's it—that's it—that's IT! Uh—oh—oh—mmm—yes—mmm—that's—that is it right there—there—there—all of it—”  
Her head kept spinning but she proceeded to suck on him; the tip reached the back of her throat until it felt as though she would gag, but she never did. He wanted it hard and she knew it.  
She tasted something on the back of her mouth and then let go, spitting it out into the floor next to the bed.  
“Stop, stop, stop, stop,” he begged in a hushed voice. He stooped over and bowed his head atop the crown of her head, and let out a low sigh.  
“Oh—Oh, shit,” he sputtered, clasping his hands onto her shoulders. “That was—that was hot.”  
“It was incredible,” she breathed out, peering up into his face. He whimpered and groaned, out of breath, but he had had enough for the time being.  
“All those little sounds you make, every single one of them—I'm in love with them,” she told him.  
“Yours, too,” he answered in a broken voice. “Oh, I don't want you to go back to Oregon. I want us to be here and have fun forever.”  
“I must make you your cake, baby boy—papacito,” she told him, tilting her head forward to press her lips to his belly, now covered once again by his shirt. “And I need to leave a day early so I have a day to relax before I go back.”  
She climbed back onto her knees to kiss him on the lips once more.  
“I'll be back to you and we will do it some more, I promise,” she vowed in a light and airy tone, holding his face in her face. “Come on—let's cuddle.”  
She took out the diaphragm and slid back towards the head of the bed and under the covers. She gestured for him to join her; he tossed back his hair and crawled towards her on the edge of the bed, careful not to fall off. He crept under the covers and wrapped his arms around her waist so to spoon. They lay there in silence, their hearts hammering inside of their chest for a bit until they both finally relaxed under the comforter and the blankets; Mia reached up to switch off the light and the room filled with darkness. And at some point, they fell asleep right there in the loft.  
But Mia awoke quite early the next morning: the room was still pitch dark by the time she opened her eyes again. Lars never stirred as she crawled out of bed and gathered up her clothes from the floor in the dim light. When she slipped on her bra and her jeans, she decided to take a shower there in the house.  
She stepped out of the room right as Olivia strode out of her bedroom in the hall in front of her.  
“There you are,” she greeted her in a low voice. “What are you doing up so early?”  
“I have to go back to work soon,” said Mia.  
“Today?” In the dim light, she could see the surprised expression upon Olivia's face.  
“No, in two days,” she clarified. “I have to get back to Portland so I can have a day of rest. I hitched a ride with him—” She gestured to the loft door. “—so I don't have my car at the moment.”  
“Oh, I see. Well, Mike can probably drive you back. It's still pretty early—about four thirty—so you'll have to wait.”  
“That's okay. I have to take a shower anyways.”  
“Ah, I see you two had a little encounter in there.”  
“We did. It was amazing.”  
“Do you have his number?”  
“I do. I'm finding myself getting closer to him, Liv.”  
“Really? Well, remember what I said last night: the key to someone's heart is via their stomach. And I think you've found it, my dear. Anyways, I gotta go to work. Here's a hug in case we don't see each other again for a while.”


	18. Chapter 18

“Don't forget your hats, Mia!” Mikayla advised her. The sun's first rays began to break through the early morning clouds and onto her and Mia's faces: it was about an hour after Olivia had left the house. Before the latter could leave the house and onto the front step, she first whirled back around for the pair of knit caps resting on the back on the couch. She slipped the one on top, a soft black cap over the thin spot on the back of her head and the wound on her forehead, and stuffed the other into her purse. The sex from the night before had pushed her wounds out of sight and out of mind, but now it was time to return to her coworkers and keep them out of sight. The shower she had had with the soft soap and the shampoo prior to leaving helped clean her wounds, and she couldn't help but picture herself making out with him as the water cascaded around their bodies. Lars was still asleep in the loft but Mikayla hoped she would return to Seattle before he awoke.  
She helped Mia into the front seat of the car and they wound through the streets of Queen Anne towards the freeway.  
“Do you still have that diaphragm I gave you last night?” she asked Mia after they pulled away from the last stoplight prior to the first onramp heading south out of Seattle towards Tacoma.  
“I do, yes,” she replied. “Why's that?”  
“Oh, just curious. Liv and I both had a feeling you and him were going to get busy last night and so when she was on her errand, she picked that up in town and then she gave it to me to give to you. If all else fails and there's no snake skin to touch, put a cap on it.”  
They turned onto the interstate and wound past the low buildings of downtown Seattle and the distant gray waters of Puget Sound towards Sea-Tac and Georgetown. Mia kept her eye on the buttoned down islands on the far side of the Sound and the lower part of the Olympic Peninsula that wasn't shrouded with rain clouds. They turned a corner and then all she could see outside the window and the windshield was Mount Rainier, the massive white cone losing part of its cloudy blanket. That enormous mountain; the elephant in the room.  
“Kayla, I need to tell you something,” she started, clearing her throat.  
“Of course. And seeing as you called me 'Kayla' and not 'Mike' that should indicate that it's important.”  
“Promise me you won't tell Liv or Lars about this.”  
“Of course, honey.”  
Mia closed her eyes and sighed. She pursed her lips together and came to terms with the fact she had already let it slip a bit.  
“You know—Wayne and I never broke up,” she started in a soft voice.  
“You didn't?”  
“No. I—I really fucked this one up. I took off my wedding ring and I made Lars think I was still single.”  
“Hang on, you cheated on Wayne with Lars?”  
“Well, it's just—he came into Smell the Magic one day and he was just so charming and sweet and hungry… Wayne just—it wasn't—it wasn't—”  
“Mia, I can't believe you would lie to Lars like that! And to do it behind Wayne's back like that, either!”  
“Well, I couldn't resist him! I wanted to seduce him and so—I… I did.”  
“Mia, I used to be in the adult industry, but for God's sake, even we have our principles. I can't believe you. If you weren't my daughters' best friend, I'd make you walk home, I swear to God.”  
Mia opened her eyes and realized she had not said a word and that exchange was merely inside her mind. She took a glimpse over at Mikayla, who glanced at her with her eyebrows raised in question.  
“Don't want to tell me?” she asked. “It's okay if you don't want to tell me.”  
“Remember when last night, I—I asked you if you had anything sexy with you on hand?”  
“Yes—?”  
“Well, I kind of mean it, though. If Lars and I are going to be—together—” She took her time with that last word and the memory of her still being married to Wayne drifted up in the back of her mind like the feathery cloud plumes around Mount Rainier. “—I—want to look around for something sexy. Something that I can slip on when he and I get close together again.”  
“And you're asking me because I—I used to be in stripping?”  
“Exactly.”  
Mikayla chuckled at that as she merged lanes.  
“I think we can make a little quickie here in Georgetown. Let's see—there's—” She peered out the windshield at the low, dark rooftops underneath the freeway. “—there's a little shop near the freeway here that I frequented often when I was on stage. Ah! There it is.”  
“I'm a little nervous,” Mia blurted out.  
“Why? You want to be sexy for him. Liv and I want you to seduce that boy and so this is a good move for you, baby girl. Here, we'll get off here and I'll show you…”  
“Maybe something I can wear while I'm cooking or baking?” she suggested.  
“Ooh, I like the sound of that! When you're putting the cinnamon buns into the oven, you can show him your cinnamon buns all the while. Or when you're setting the plate down in front of him, you're showing off the girls.”  
They turned off of the freeway and around a corner before parking in front of a short building that resembled a shack made of brick. Wrought iron bars covered the dimly lit tiny window next to the red front door. There wasn't a sign to be found anywhere on the building, but Mia spotted the scarlet glow emerging from around the edges of the window. Mikayla turned over the engine and they sat in silence for a moment before she spoke again.  
“I also brought you here because you're a little bit bigger than most. Big places that sell underwear, they don't go very high in cup size and shape and also variety. Here, they've got lingerie for girls of any size and they're sexy on top of that! They've also got toys and things if you're curious.” She then climbed out and rounded the hood of the car.  
“Every girl should check out one of these places at least once in her life,” she said as she helped Mia out of the front seat.  
They stepped into the tiny shop, which had shelves, the first ones closest to the entrance were packed with all manner of sex toys ranging from spiked collars, pink fuzzy handcuffs, leather bullwhips, small vibrators, and dildos of all colors to simple smooth rope made of silk and delicate silver and gold chains. Mia pictured herself tying Lars to a chair and then feeding him her Puerto Rican donuts as she ran her hand over the bundle of silky rope. She gazed on at the rows of bras, panties, thongs, and teddies near the back: some of them were leather, others were of silk, others of satin, others of lace, others looked as though they would not cover hers or Mikayla's nipples if either of them tried.  
“'Morning, Mikayla,” the shop owner, an older woman with silvery hair and dressed in a pink sweater, greeted her in a low, velvety voice from behind a doorway separated by a series of black round beads. She stepped out before the gray cash register with a slight warm blush upon her face. “Long time, no see.”  
She spotted Mia caressing the rope on the shelf. “Who's this lovely little cinnamon girl?”  
“Patty, this is Marcia and Sonia's best friend Mia,” Mikayla introduced. “She's got a little Danish pastry of a boy in her life now and she consulted the advice of the adults in the room.”  
“She's come to the right place. And I see you're fondling that rope there pretty well. What's he look like, honey?”  
Mia felt her face growing hot as she dropped the rope back onto the shelf and turned to the two women gazing on at her with intention. It was all happening so fast right then, and she knew she would have to explain it to Wayne when she returned to Portland.  
“What does he—look like?”  
“Yeah. You know. Is he handsome? Got that icy, steely Scandinavian hard demeanor that'll knock you out with just one look?”  
“He's—He's short, aroung my height. He's got—nice long hair, and he's got a nice round full face, but yeah, he's—he's got that—what you just said—”  
“Yeah, he's got that real Nordic look,” Mikayla clarified.  
“Mm, I see. Exotic, short and round, too… Tell me, where does he like being touched? Like with foreplay?”  
Mia moved her hands in circular motions over her belly and Patty's face lit up.  
“Ah, through his stomach. Probably on his chest, too. Those frisky Scandinavians, I tell you. Well, let's see—I'm gonna come over here and now I should ask you, what's your size? I can tell you're kind of big.”  
“Forty triple D, I think? It's been a while.”  
“Oh, honey, you should always be on the look out for new bras every couple of years. I know it's difficult with bigger sizes but still. Well, let's see—I've got these nice lacy little teddies that'll flaunt the girls and your body for him. I've got all kinds of panties that might make him blush—”  
“Or he'll find it and make you blush,” Mikayla retorted from the cash register.  
“Or he'll find it and ask you about it and make you blush, exactly!”  
“I—I like the red lace,” Mia sputtered out.  
“Lace rules, babe,” said Mikayla.  
“I second that, too. Leather is always a go-to, but it can get cumbersome whereas lace is delicate and fitted to your skin. And you can't go wrong with red—or black for that matter.”  
“And we saw you touching that rope, too—you're thinking of tying him up, aren't you?”  
Mia was reluctant to nod her head, but she nodded.  
“That's my girl.” Mikayla clapped her hands together.  
“Let's see—what do you do for a living?”  
“I'm a baker and a hair stylist. Mostly a baker.”  
“I have cooking tools back there by the whips and collars. They're hidden behind the vibrators—you see 'em, Mikayla? Yeah, there they are: spatulas, whisks, rolling pins, and whatnot. And they're all legitimate, too: they're not vibrators or toys, you can actuall cook up a meal with those. I ask because you said he's a little round and he likes having his tummy tickled. Those can really amp up your game, doll. Are you uncomfortable? You're face is all flushed.”  
“A—er—a little bit, yes.” She pushed the edge of her cap back to ease the heat on her forehead.  
“That's okay, but you're in good hands here, though, I promise. I'm here to help you pleasure a guy and give it to him as much as possible. Now, let's see: we've got the red lace bra, the matching panties, the black teddy, the rope I'd think? Yes! I forgot to mention all lingerie is on sale so you can get another little teddy for half off. And I would think one of those pieces of cookware while we're here, too.”  
“Yes,” answered Mia, sighing with relief and fanning herself with her hand.  
“Okay. Now will we be splitting the bill or will Madame de la Garza do the honors this morning?”

“I want to thank you again, Mike,” Mia breathed out. She removed her hat to fix her dark hair and fan her neck once more. They were about an hour north of Portland, but she still felt hot under the collar from being in the shop. Everything she and Mikayla had bought were in a white paper sack in the back seat of the car.  
“Of course, honey. You still feeling warm?”  
“Yeah… God.” She leaned back in her seat and gazed out the windshield at the rolling droves of dark forest lining the edges of the highway outside of the car.  
“Well, you did great in there, though. And when you see him again, you can be the even sexier baker now.”  
“Speaking of which, could we swing by Smell the Magic when we get back to Portland? I want to check up on something.”  
“Of course! We can catch Marcia as she's clocking in for the day, too.”  
They fell back into silence for some time as they proceeded on down towards the small town of Kelso and Mount St. Helens and eventually, Vancouver and then the bridge to Portland. Mia felt her body growing more tense as they came a single mile closer to Portland. She would have to hide all of the lingerie and the rope from Wayne once she set foot into the house, that is unless some time away from him and the house tempered him and his actions. Perhaps it was being in close quarters in the house that set him off that much.  
“I just thought of spanking him with a spatula,” she blurted out once Mount St. Helens entered view: the gaping navy blue hole in the north side blown out from the eruption almost seven years before menaced back at them. Mikayla flicked her head back in response.  
“Woof,” she muttered.  
They fell back into silence as they traveled through Vancouver and then crossed the bridge over the Columbia River into northern Portland. Mikayla wound her way through the city towards the southern end, and the offramp which would take them to the neighborhood of Smell the Magic. At that point, it was almost nine o'clock in the morning, and Mia knew Lars had to be awake at that point as she climbed out of the front seat and ambled towards the front door. Marcia's face lit up when she recognized her.  
“There she is!” she declared, setting down a cookie sheet on the shelf behind the glass display.  
“Here I am—your mom's coming in, too.”  
“I should tell you—Sandra got a message on her machine last night. She was able to write it down for the both of us.” She picked up a sheet of paper from the shelf and read it aloud.  
“'Hi, Sandra! It's Kirk Hammett. Listen—about my birthday cake. I was wondering if you and your girls could change the inside of the cake to red velvet if it's not too much trouble. Thank you and I'll talk to you later.'”  
Mikayla entered the room right behind Mia at that moment.  
“Mom, Kirk called,” Marcia promptly told her.  
“Oh! What'd he say?”  
“Red. Velvet. Cake. Red velvet cake. Red velvet like something else.”  
“Oooh, he's gonna love that. And I'm sure Mr. Lars is going to love that, too.”  
“Anyways, what brings you here?” Marcia folded her arms over her chest. “You should be resting up.”  
“I just came by to check in with you and to tell you that—I asked your mom here to take me shopping for something sexy for little Lars the next time I see him.”  
She raised her eyebrows and flashed her grin.  
“Oh, boy. Mama knows best, too. So are we talking chains and whips or—?”  
“Lace. Cookware. What I do best. Mike also tells me that doing a little tease will do wonders, too.”  
Marcia raised an eyebrow at that.  
“You surprise, Mia Dulce,” she chuckled as a young couple entered the bakery. “Anyways, I gotta get back to work. We'll talk more later.” She gave Mia and Mikayla both hugs before they slipped back outside and into the car. The sensation of butterflies flurried up inside of Mia's stomach as she knew Wayne could perhaps be home when they pulled up to the curb before the house. She steadied her breathing and thought about Lars' sleeping body next to her as they came closer and closer to the blue and white house. She already missed his touch and the way he tasted against her tongue. She sighed through her nose and tried to steady her heart once they turned the corner.  
The driveway was empty except for her own car. She parted her lips and relaxed, and even more so when she and Mikayla gave one another one last embrace before she went inside with her shopping bag. She hoped he wasn't planning another sneak attack by the time she unlocked the door and entered the dim foyer.  
She waved Mikayla off and closed the door. The whole house hung silent and still: she was alone.  
Mia sighed again, and removed her knit cap, and massaged her brow. She ambled down the hall towards the kitchen and found no note on the counter. But she knew for a fact she was alone in the house. She needed a hiding place for the lingerie as she set down the bag and her purse on the table. She was about to drop her house key back into her purse when she spotted a strange piece of paper on the inside of her purse. She picked it up and recognized Ashley's neat penmanship, and—  
“Lars' number,” she said in a hushed voice. She glanced behind her, and she was indeed alone in the house. She nibbled on her bottom lip before lunging forward for the corded phone on the wall. She punched in the number and waited, hearing the ringing tone all the while. She knew Lars was still in Seattle and nowhere near his phone, but it was worth it. A light beep caught her attention.  
“Hey, this is Lars, I'm either too drunk or I'm banging away right now so leave a message, behage og tak skal du have.”  
Mia smiled at the sound of his voice on the machine. There was a second light beep.  
“Hey, papacito. It's Mia. On the way home, I got a little something in Seattle, a little something for you the next time you and I see each other. Call me back as soon as you can, baby boy. Kiss, kiss.” She hung up the phone and tossed her hair back, and that was when her head began to spin once again from traveling and from hunger.  
“A little something refreshing and then a cat nap,” she decided aloud, cramming Lars' phone number into her jeans pocket right next to her diaphragm.


	19. Chapter 19

Once she awoke from her nap, and saw she was still alone in the house, Mia hurried to the bedroom for the cordless phone and called Lars again, once more catching his machine.  
“It's me again. I am just thinking about you because I'm back at my house and I am alone. I woke up from my nap thinking of you. Call me, baby—call me at this number. Kisses.”  
She hung up and knew it was going to be difficult for her to speak to Lars over the phone if Wayne was going to be in the house with her, but she had faith that Lars was going to call her soon. She kept the handheld phone underneath her pillow in the master bedroom. She lay on the center of the bed, waiting for something, anything, be it the phone ringing or Wayne stepping through the front door. Mia gazed up at the milky ceiling above her, and held still there on top of the covers. She pictured Lars arriving home to wherever he lived, eating hors d'oeuvres all the while and craving something more.  
The butterflies began to return to her stomach right that moment; that image of him putting some kind, any kind, of food into his mouth be it sushi or a peach. Pieces of peaches.  
The way that little piece of flesh under his jaw pulsated with his slow chewing, and then the way he tilted his head back to swallow and to emphasize his throat. His stare into her as he took another bite. His shifting his weight in his seat and undoing his pants to relax.  
Then she pictured Wayne eating, hogging the plate as if he was starving to death so he could hardly taste the food much less thank her for it. Sometimes he would wear the food upon his face.  
She thought back to Lars again, and how he always managed to keep himself clean after eating. He never had grease or anything running down his chin, or smeared all over his mouth; and when he burped, he always pardoned himself. Then there was that soft look on his face when he had had enough and that slightly frightened look in his eye when she begged for him to have more. He was frightened, but she recalled it again, and then again for a closer look into his eyes.  
He wasn't frightened. He was aroused.  
But he was frightened of being caught stuffing his face.  
Eat, she thought as the image of him picked up another hors d'oeuvre and slipped it into his mouth. Eat and fill your belly, that beautiful belly of yours.  
She licked her lips and then gave the bottom one a slight nibble.  
The butterflies in her stomach channeled down below her belt and to her clitoris.  
Every bite he took inside of her mind, every swallow, everything, made the butterflies multiply until there was a tugging sensation. She made a soft groan inside of her throat, much like the ones he did whenever he had enough to eat for one sitting. She reached down, and unbuttoned her jeans, and her fingers clambered inside of the band of her underwear. She stroked the skin on her crotch before moving further down to the lips. She wanted him back there. Every stroke and every touch, she wanted him back with her to taste her.  
The phone ringing startled her, it being right next to her ear and also because she knew it was him. Using her free hand, she reached under her pillow for the cordless phone and clicked it on.  
“Hello?”  
“Hello, darling,” his voice crackled on the other end.  
“Papacito,” she replied in a near whisper. “Are you home?”  
“I am, as a matter of fact. I woke up like right after you left Olivia's house, and so I took the first flight back to the Bay Area, and I just walked in. You got a little something for me?”  
“I did. Let's see—I got lace. Red lace. The lace is nice and soft, too, so when you and I are together, you can touch it and you can also touch me.”  
“I like red. Red is hot. Oh, did Marcia and Sandra get Kirk's message at all?”  
“They sure did! And yes, when I go back tomorrow morning, we will get started on the red velvet cake.”  
“Oh, you're such a pro. What else you got?”  
“I got a teddy, a couple of teddies, actually.”  
“Always like a nice teddy on a nice body. Speaking of red velvet cake—” She heard him clear his throat and a soft creaking noise behind him. He must have been laying down right then. “—my tummy's rumbling. I kind of want something, but I would have to—you know—feed myself. What are you wearing right now?”  
“Oh, just the same clothes as before. My jeans and my shirt, but my jeans are undone, though.”  
“Oh? What are you doing?”  
“Touching.”  
“Touching yourself?”  
“Of course.”  
She heard him smack his lips on the other end, and then he sniffled once, twice, four times.  
“Are you alright?”  
“Yeah,” he answered in a light voice. “I'm just—a little bit warm right now. A little bit—wanting to—take my shirt off for you.”  
She ran her fingers deeper over the lips of her clitoris, and another groan escaped her throat.  
“I heard that,” he taunted, lowering his voice.  
“Of course you did. I'm thinking of you without a shirt, all full of food and perfect.”  
He smacked his lips again, followed by a brief silence and then—  
“I just unbuttoned my pants,” he confessed, nearly whispering into his receiver. “They're going to be coming off here in a second if you keep fondling yourself.”  
“I am—yes, I am.”  
“Consider it—done. Wait—wait—wait—” There was a rustling sound on his end. “—there we go. Now, where were we? You told me you were picturing me at your will?”  
“I don't remember now.”  
“How could you not remember? It was like a minute ago.”  
“I don't. I can't remember your touch, either.”  
“Is that why you're touching yourself?”  
“I can't remember your tongue inside of me, either.”  
“Is that why you are touching yourself?”  
“No.”  
“No?”  
“No. That is not why I am touching myself.”  
“Then may I ask why you are.”  
Mia nibbled on her bottom lip.  
“I am touching myself because I don't want you inside of me.”  
“What you mean you don't want me inside of you?”  
“I don't…” Her voice trailed off. “What's it like there in the Bay Area?”  
“Cloudy. There's a cloud right outside my window that looks—”  
Mia breathed into the mouth piece of the receiver; she stroked herself again right then.  
“—that looks like a—a—”  
Mia groaned inside of her throat again.  
“—a bottle of—something. I forget?”  
“I want to kiss you,” she told him in a light, airy whisper. “Hard.”  
“Where?” His voice broke.  
“Where do you think?”  
She heard him let out a low whistle, which he then followed up with a light moan. He smacked his lips yet again.  
“Are you still hungry?”  
“I think so. There's—pastrami in my fridge, I think?”  
“Pastrami, but no chorizo?”  
“Oh, baby girl, I wish there was chorizo in my drawer. Hang on—”  
She heard him struggling with something on that other end. He groaned inside of his throat, and she could hear him breathing hard into the mouth piece.  
“I just took off my underwear.”  
“So you are—”  
“Pantless. I'm going to fuck you.”  
“No,” she teased.  
“I'm going to fock you so hard and so fast, like last night when you were on your hands and knees. I will have my hands on your hips again and I'll get you from behind once again.”  
“No,” she repeated. “No, no, no. No way, big boy.”  
“No?”  
“No. I am going to feed you. I am going to make you dinner in my teddy, and then I am going to tie you down to a chair and stuff red velvet cake right into your mouth. I am going to make you eat all of the cake. I will force you to lick the frosting off of my fingers so I can take off my clothes and show you everything again. But I am going to fatten you up first. I am going to get that belly so, so nice and full, and then—”  
“And then what?”  
She heard him swallow on the other end.  
“—I will dance for you. Slowly. My hips in your face. Bring my lips to the side of your face, but I will not kiss you because you are such a mess. I will lick all of the frosting off of your face, and then I will kiss you. And then I will kiss you on your bare bloated belly before I untie you. And then I will push you down onto the floor and linger over you, my feet planted on either side of you and make you stare at me, make you stare at my thighs, my pussy, my hips, and my whole body. And then I will hang over you in that push up position and stare at you in the eye all while giving you a nice little belly rub. I will run my finger tips down your belly and to your genitals.”  
“As we're—eating—” he sputtered, his voice breaking. “Will you touch me?”  
“Yes,” she whispered, her index and middle fingers right over her vagina. “All over your knees and back. I will not touch you under the belt, but I will touch you. And then once all is said and done, that is when we fuck. We fuck in the middle of the night, in the middle of the room, right there in front of James, Kirk, and Jason, right there on the floor. You will have your cake and eat it, papacito.”  
Silence, and then he made a soft whimper noise, followed by a groan, and then a groan inside of his throat. The sound of the front door closing caught her attention. She gasped.  
“What is it?” he asked in a hushed voice.  
“I must go,” she told him, never raising her voice as she knew Wayne had walked in. She took her hand out of her underwear, and rolled over onto his side. “I am getting hungry myself. But come to the bakery. Come to the bakery and we will have the cake, and perhaps yours, too.”  
“Ohhh, honey pie. Gladly. And that pastrami does sound delicious, too. So—mmm, I will talk to you soon.”  
“Of course.” She pursed her lips together and made a kissing noise. They hung up at the same time and she ran her fingers through her dark hair right as Wayne stepped into the doorway, his face flushed and his sweat shirt barely covering his bulky body.  
“There you are.” His voice was such a contrast to Lars' squeaky Danish accent.  
“Here I am,” she echoed, rolling over onto her belly and placing her chin into her hand. He gestured at the wound on her forehead.  
“What happened here?”  
“I got hit in the head in Pike Place Market.”  
“Oh, yeah, that's right. I got a—a call from the hospital up there and they told me what happened to you. I didn't know you'd be home so fast, though.”  
She shrugged. “I got a ride.”  
“Who called?”  
“My—My dad.”  
“Your dad?”  
“Yes. I have been asleep for four days and—you know, he should know.”  
“Oh, I see.”  
“Where have you been?”  
“Well, since you weren't here all this time, I went over to my parents' house for a few days. I also saw the—the white bag in the kitchen.”  
He folded his arms over his chest.  
“Er—yes. When I got out and I hitched a ride back to Portland, I stopped by a little shop for some new lingerie.”  
Wayne tilted his head forward.  
“Oh, I see.”  
“Yes.”  
“Are you feeling—”  
“I'm kind of hungry,” she confessed, setting down the phone receiver.  
“Kind of hungry? Well, let's do lunch and then we'll—have a little fun.”


	20. Chapter 20

Mia rested her chin in her hand as she watched Wayne down his next plate of food. She had already had enough for herself and now she was watching him out of mere politeness. She longed for Lars to be next to her, eating the same plate of mofongo she had whipped up after a quick run to the market for a bunch of ripe plantains. She pictured him dipping his spoon into the smooth mashed plantains and the pieces of bacon and then inserting it into his mouth as he gazed into her eyes. But she thought of replacing the bacon bits with pork belly instead. Pork belly straight into his belly, and plantains for his crotch.  
On the other hand, she had no idea if Lars would like plantains, or the stew altogether, in particular the traditional kind served with octopus flavor. But on the other side, Wayne gobbled up every part of the dish as if it was going out of style. After the final bite, he glanced up at her, still with his mouth full.  
“God, I missed your cooking,” he told her with pieces of plantain and bacon bits stuck to his lips. She grimaced a bit but managed to crack a smile at him.  
“Would you—like some more?” she choked out, careful not to gag at the sight of a rather large chunk of mashed plantain next to a piece of garlic resting on his bottom lip.  
“You know it, baby,” he commanded, shoving the empty plate in front of her. She winced before picking up the plate and taking it back to the stove for yet another helping for him.  
Good Lord, why did I marry him, she asked herself, picking up the wooden spoon from the counter next to the stove top. She scooped out another helping of plantains from the pot and, using her hands, molded it into a ball in the middle of the plate. She took her thumb and pressed a dent in the top of the ball, and dropped in a few fine chopped pieces of bacon inside before ladling steamy chicken broth around the edges of the plate.  
Why did I marry this fat bastard, this fat pig, when I could have Lars? No, I mustn't think that. I married Wayne and I married into his family, and I cook for him. If I cook out of love for Lars, I must continue to cook out of love for Wayne. I must respect his stomach the way I make love to Lars' stomach.  
When she returned to the table, no sooner had she set down the plate before Wayne when he began wolfing down the next helping of mofongo. She took a seat across from him and folded her arms over the table top, and sighed.  
“So I think I might get a job soon,” he began through his mouthful.  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. Construction. Dad helped me get in contact with a little company on the northeast side of the town near Multnomah, where Marcia, Sonia, and Ashley all live. It's temporary, but it'll be something to help us out, though.”  
“Wait a minute, construction? In the middle of November?”  
“Yeah, that's what I said, too. But I guess a lot of it is already built up and most of the work takes place indoors, though.”  
He smacked his lips and that was when Mia flashed back on her memory of speaking to Lars on the phone, and his smacking his lips, except the very sound of it on his end did anything but make her grimace and wish he was there with her.  
“So how 'bout you?” he asked after taking another couple of bites. “What's the first thing at the bakery when you go back tomorrow?”  
“My first big order back to Smell the Magic is—baking a cake. A birthday cake.”  
“What kind of cake?”  
“Red velvet.”  
“Mmm. Do like red velvet cake. So what about that gash on your head? Did they find out what caused it?”  
Mia shook her head.  
“Nope. They never told me. In fact, I don't think they even know what caused it. But it did take quite the blow to me, though. It was enough to knock me out cold for four days.”  
“I also want to know, what were you doing up in Seattle, in Pike Place Market?”  
“Sandra wanted me to go up there. Pike Place sometimes has foods and ingredients that Portland does not have. We might get plantains here, but we might not get something else, whereas Seattle does.”  
“Oh, I see.”  
He had finished his last helping of mofongo and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He smacked his lips again and swallowed.  
“So you wanna—”  
“Do I wanna what?”  
“Show me what you got?”  
She hesitated, wondering what he meant by that. And then she gasped and nodded her head with a smile.  
“Oh, yes! That!”  
She scrambled to her feet and headed down the corridor to the bedroom for the white shopping bag, now on the bed. Her heart sank when she took out the teddies and the lacy underwear, and lay them out, flat on the surface of the bed. She ran her fingers over the dainty scarlet red lace making up the cups and the straps of the bra. She bought this to be sexy just for Lars, but she had to put it on for Wayne. It felt wrong, but it also felt right. Lars wasn't hers, but she wanted him for herself.  
Mia sighed as she peeled off her blouse and unhooked the bra she was already wearing. She lay the former down on the bedspread and then lay the cups of the bra into each other before laying it down on top of the shirt.  
The cool air in the bedroom tightened the skin on and around her nipples to where they pointed out like the needle on a record player. She closed her eyes for a moment to think of Lars eyeing her nipples and perhaps running his tongue over them. She then picked up the bra and slipped it on over her chest. The lace hugged and fitted to the round curvature of her breasts, and stretched as she slid the straps over her bare shoulders, and hooked it at the center of her back. She sighed through her mouth and relaxed.  
She wheeled around and doubled back down the hall to the kitchen to show off to Wayne.  
His eyes widened at the sight of the bright red lace in contrast to her gentle light brown skin.  
“Oh, wow,” he breathed out, running a hand through his hair.  
“Yeah. I had a—a feeling you would like this.”  
“I love it. Although—”  
“Although what?”  
“Do you have panties?”  
“I—I do.”  
“Show me those.”  
She swallowed again and shifted her weight; her whole body tightened up as she returned down the hall for the pair of panties. She dropped her jeans to her ankles and then let them fall onto the floor, followed by her current pair of panties. She stood there in the middle of the room, her butt and the backs of her thighs running over with goose skin from the cool air in the room. The spot above her clitoris ached a bit from where Lars had thrust onto her; perhaps it was just from having the diaphragm there that hurt and not necessarily just from Lars humping her.  
The sound of Wayne clearing his throat took her aback. She gasped before turning her whole body to see him standing in the doorway with his hands pressed to either side of the door frame. His eyes gleamed at the sight of red lace panties in her hands, even though she stood in the middle of the room wearing nothing but a bra, and with her jeans and her old pair of underwear around her feet.  
“Get in bed,” he ordered. She paused, not sure what he might do to her right there. She glanced down at the pair of underwear in her hands; her worst fear at that moment was the phone ringing and Wayne answering it to find out Lars had called again. She hoped he wouldn't call again as she set the panties down on the bed spread.  
“Get in bed, dammit,” he repeated. She swallowed and strode around the side of the bed to the head board, careful not move her legs at the knee so much from the goose skin covering her and the sore sensation on her clitoris. She reached her side and lifted the edge of the blanket. She slid under the covers and lay her head on the pillow. He lumbered into the room, wheezing.  
She pictured Lars being as fat as him, and perhaps even bigger. But he was kind and gentle to her, and she knew that if he ever grew to be that big, he would never be any different than when he was slender and stuffing his face full of food. He also wasn't there: she had her husband to entertain now.  
Wayne yanked the covers back from over her body, and took off his pants, and then his underwear.  
Mia watched him lay down next to her, the mattress creaking all the while. He stroked her upper arm and her shoulder.  
“Come on,” he said in a low voice. She pursed her lips together. How she wanted to be next to Lars right at that moment.  
“Come on,” he repeated, this time more insisting.  
“I don't know,” she confessed.  
“What do you mean you don't know?”  
“I just—oh, what the fuck.”  
Mia rolled over onto her side and shoved her tongue into his mouth. She closed her eyes and pictured Lars right before her. But the taste was different. There were plantains, and bacon, and garlic, but something else stood inside of that mouth. Lars tasted sweeter; Wayne had more of a strong flavor. It was drinking a glass of beer and then having a glass of vodka right after it.  
She pulled her head back and slithered her tongue around her lips.  
“What?” he demanded. “Come on! Give it to me! Give it to me right now!”  
He held onto her shoulders and yanked her closer to him. She felt something brush against her hip, right against that “w” shaped wound on her hip. She stared into his eyes, and she knew if she looked down, she would want to stare back into his eyes again.  
She felt his hips gyrating and grinding against her: with each pulse, she wanted Lars to take his place and to hold her and love her. Each time, each push and pull against her, she wanted to get away from him and run back to the softness and the comfort of Lars. But he held onto her too hard and she struggled to breathe with each movement.  
“Give—it—to me,” he snarled into her face in between thrusts. He gave her several more before shoving her away from him. She lay there for a second and figured it was for the best.  
She pushed herself up onto her side and then slid her legs over him, and hoisted herself on top of him. She lifted herself into an upright position so she could ride him. She stared into his eyes, his eyes, not Lars' eyes. Not those green irises that swallowed her whole. Those eyes burned into her like cigarettes.  
“—mi—mi amor—” she squeaked out, trying to make it seem as though she was actually there with him. Each push and pull felt like a hot iron hammer to her already sore clitoris and her vagina. He clasped his hands to her knees and dug the tips of his fingers into her skin. He pulled back with every gyration of her hips. The more she rode him, the more he scratched her knees; meanwhile, his whole belly jiggled like a big bowl of gelatin.  
“That's it,” he moaned over the creaking of the bed, “that's it! That's IT!”  
The pain underneath her seared throughout her hips and up her crotch and into her lower belly. She grunted and groaned in pain, but she kept going until she felt something trickle against the back of her thigh.  
Mia yelled out, her voice echoing over the walls, and she fell off of him, face down on the mattress next to him.  
Wayne let out a long low whistle and lay there with beads of sweat collecting on either side of his face. Her clitoris and her crotch throbbed in pain, so much that her stomach turned.  
“I know you liked that,” he panted. “Later on—like when you get home from work tomorrow, we'll do it from behind.”  
“No—” she gasped, the nausea sweeping over her.  
“No?”  
“No.”  
“Hang on, you're bleeding. You've got some blood on me.”  
“Yes, I'm—I just started my period.”  
“Dammit, you should've told me! Gross—just grody—I gotta wash off now—”  
He pushed himself up onto his elbows and rolled out of bed, the mattress creaking and groaning as he stood to his feet and lumbered out of the room to the bathroom. She lay there, face down, and tried to think of Lars to ward off the pain and the nausea, but it was useless because her clitoris and her vagina both continued to ache in spite of the soothing cool air in the room. She hoped he wouldn't ask about it when she saw him again at Smell the Magic.  
Mia set the red lace panties and the matching bra on the counter next to the sink, and then she stepped into the shower to rinse off the minute glimmers of sweat on her forehead and on her neck. She turned around to let the warm water cascade over the curvature of her butt and then trickle down towards her wounded clitoris. She crossed her arms over her chest and she spotted several small scratches on her upper arms. She had no idea where they came from at first, but she soon figured they could be from when Wayne gripped onto her as they were kissing each other in bed.  
She groaned as the water ran over the wound, and left a sharp sting in its wake. She was afraid to bend over, but she had to rid of the blood somehow. Mia stooped over for her bottle of conditioner and the water from the shower head washed over the backs of her thighs. Her eyes snapped shut as the water exacerbated the wound. She gasped once she stood back upright.  
“Oh—God—” she moaned out, hoping Wayne wouldn't hear her.  
She held still there in the middle of the shower with the water washing over her back and her hair. Her stomach turned with every painful pulse on her clitoris. She tried to keep it together as she washed and scrubbed her hair with the pearly white conditioner.  
Mia pictured Lars laying on his couch or on his bed with his pants and underwear off. She wondered if he was touching himself as she washed down her body and the scratches on her shoulders and on her knees with the loofah; she rinsed it off and soaped up again to wash the rest of the blood on her clitoris. She groaned and grunted as the soft soap soothed over the wound, but once she rinsed off, the pain began to subside. There was that image of her and Lars making out in the shower, and she hoped he would be onboard with it once the opportunity presented itself.  
She ran her fingers over the “w” shaped mark on her hip, now darkened and beginning to fade away from healing, and thought back to when they were laying in bed in his first hotel room. She longed for his lips again, but this time on the wound between her legs.  
Once she began washing the conditioner out of her hair, the wave of nausea over her started to fade away. She sighed through her mouth as the water trickled through her hair and rinsed away every piece of conditioner; she grabbed up the bottle of shampoo on the shelf next to her and washed down her hair one last time. She gave one final rinse and then switched off the water and reached for the clean towel on the bar next to her.  
She dried off her hair and then wrapped the towel around her body before stepping out onto the rug.  
There was a knock on the door.  
“Mia, can you hurry up? I've really got to pee.”  
“Why don't you just come in here?” she suggested in a hoarse voice. “I'm only going to put on clean underwear and then come right out.”  
“Well, could you unlock the door please?”  
“The door isn't locked.”  
“Yes, it is. I heard it lock.”  
“That was just the door closing. I didn't lock it.”  
“Yes, it is! Unlock the door!”  
She scoffed and ambled across the cold tile to open the door for him. She then returned to the counter to put on the bra and the panties, and to put her hair up in the towel. Wayne stood before the toilet bowl next to her, still with no pants.  
Once she hooked her bra, she strode out of the bathroom and back across the hall to the bedroom. Since tomorrow was another day, she decided to let her hair dry out for a bit and then return the towel to its rung. She returned to under the covers with a book and decided to call it a night once the evening shadows engulfed the house. Every so often, she heard him wheezing outside of the bedroom door like a pig. She wrinkled her nose and tried to think of Lars each time; this continued until the sun hung low outside of the house.  
“Mia, it's almost five o'clock,” he told her, poking his head into the room.  
“And?”  
“Aren't you going to make dinner?”  
“You can make dinner yourself. I have to go back to work tomorrow, remember?”  
“Yeah, but you could at least still make dinner, though.”  
“You can make dinner just fine, Wayne. I need to relax. I have to get up early, you know.”  
“Dammit, Mia, you were gone for five days—I missed your cooking! You've got to make me dinner and in the way you do it!”  
“NO.” Her voice echoed over the walls of the room. The echo was followed up by silence, stunned silence between the two of them. Wayne lumbered into the room and belly flopped onto the bed, missing her by mere inches. The mattress creaked out in agony.  
“Jesus!” she exclaimed, dropping her book onto the floor next to the bed. He reached up and slapped her across the face.  
“What the hell was that for?” she demanded, clasping a hand to her left cheek.  
“Make—dinner,” he growled.  
“And—And what if I don't?”  
“Make dinner, or I will do more than give you a little slap on the face.”  
She fumed at him, her cheek throbbing in pain. But it was for her own good. She shoved the corner of the blankets back and slithered out of bed onto the cool carpet.  
“What do you want?” she demanded.  
“What?”  
“What do you want?”  
“I don't know. Surprise me.”  
She nibbled on her bottom lip. Lars said that exact same thing to her. To hear him saying that did not feel right. She sighed through her nose and continued down the hall into the kitchen in her red lace lingerie, the lingerie she had bought for Lars' pleasure.  
She went on autopilot as she used the rest of the plantain and garlic mash to make mofongo relleno with pieces of pan fried chicken. She stood there in the middle of the kitchen in her underwear, and her face aching from the hard slap. Once she turned over the chicken so it could cook all the way through, she took a step back and thought about the red velvet cake she and Marcia would make for Kirk's birthday. She then remembered the cake she promised to bake for Lars' birthday. A smile crossed her face when she imagined him eating a whole platter of cake and then rubbing his belly afterwards. She caressed the other side of her face with her index and middle fingers when she thought of all the delicate and light touches she wanted to give him.  
The room filled the warm aroma of cooked seasoned chicken, and she made a mental note to ask Lars about James and Jason's birthdays to bake them cakes. As she stirred the chicken in the sauce pan, she thought of making the four of them mofongo but with turkey in lieu of pork belly and chicken. It was nearly Thanksgiving, after all.  
She balled up the remainder of the reheated plantain mash on the same plate as before, and then pressed her thumb into the top to put in the pieces of chicken, and then ladled the broth around the edges of the plate. She did the same thing but with a plate for herself.  
They both remained silent throughout the whole dinner; he never said anything about slapping her or about her popped cherry.  
Once Mia had washed off the dishes and put them back into the cupboards, it was seven thirty and she decided to call it a night thirty minutes early. She took off her bra and hung it up in the closet. She slid under the covers on her side of the bed; it was a fleeting thought, but she pictured the bed frame breaking in the middle of the night from Wayne flopping down to her to hit her. She hoped that wouldn't happen as she turned out the light, and pulled the covers up to her ear, and closed her eyes.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never been here, never coming back, never want to think about the things that happened today.  
> Wanna lay down on the warm ground, think I'm gonna need a little time to myself.  
> Don't fall down now, you will never get up. Don't fall down now (don't fall down now).  
> Don't fall down now, you will never get up. Don't fall down now, now…  
> “Strawberry”, Everclear

Mia’s eyes cracked open to the sight of total darkness all around her. Silence filled the room. She rolled onto her back to feel the surface of the bed behind her. No one there. She opened her eyes all the way and blinked several times so her eyes would adjust to the darkness around her. Wayne was nowhere to be found.  
She sighed through her mouth before she rolled out of bed onto the stone cold carpet and made her way to the bathroom. The wound on her clitoris had healed over, but ached from the cool air in the house.  
The yellow light from the lights over the mirror glared into her eyes for a few seconds before her adjusted to it. She stared at her reflection, at the girl with the light brown skin and the surface level scratches over the upper parts of her arms and over her knees, and the “w” shaped wound on her hip. She turned her head to see the bruise on her face where Wayne had slapped her. She ran the tips of her fingers over the spot and grimaced when the contusion began to ache even from soft touch.  
Another bruise to explain to Lars when they saw each other again, she thought as she eyed the scab on her forehead, which was about the size of a quarter and in the shape of a head of a spoon.  
In time, she got dressed in a black V-neck blouse, black trousers, and her knit cap, and carried her apron and her purse out to the car, and drove to Smell the Magic for her first day back to work in almost a week.  
She unlocked the door and clicked on the light, and inhaled deep. How lovely to be back in the bakery again.  
She signed in, and then set down her purse to tie on the apron, and got right to it, turning on the ovens and taking out two cookie sheets. She made the first few batches of Puerto Rican chocolate donuts and raspberry danishes for the day before beginning preparation of Kirk’s birthday cake, but she wanted to save it for when Marcia clocked in that morning.  
But as she finished out the rest of the first batch for the morning, she pictured Lars eating the whole cake right before her eyes. Not a slice, but the whole thing. He gazed back at her as he slipped the fork into his mouth: those green irises penetrated into her. She felt it take hold inside of her. No more pretending: it was time to do it for real, to make a separate red velvet cake just for him, behind everyone’s back; complete with the sweet cream cheese frosting on top and make him eat it.  
Then there was his birthday the day after Christmas, and the cake he had asked her to make for him.  
She grinned at the thought of Lars eating so much cake.  
She glanced out the doorway of the back room to the deep violet sky outside of the front door of the bakery. There was plenty of time before the first customers even started coming in for that morning.  
She washed her hands with haste before picking out a small silvery metal bowl for mixing. She scrounged up the ingredients and piled them into the bowl. The whisking heads of the electric mixer whirred on and she soon incorporated the flour, the buttermilk, the butter, the sugar, the cocoa powder, the white vinegar, and the red color all together until it was as smooth and pleasant as Lars’ skin. At that point, she set down the electric mixer on the counter, and gazed into the batter, and nibbled on her bottom lip.  
“I need to know how you taste,” she whispered into the bowl. She dipped the tip of her pinky finger into the red batter and ran her tongue over the top of it. Creamy, buttery, smooth, with a little kiss of vinegar near the back of her mouth. Perfect.  
Mia poured the mixture into a small round cake pan, only to find she had enough for a second tier. The layers were going to be thick and small, like bricks, but she figured it was going to be more than enough for him as she slid the pans into the second oven for twenty five minutes. All the while, she whipped up the cream cheese frosting in a separate bowl, and with a flat white spatula.  
She took a light lick of the frosting, that time using her ring finger.  
“Needs a kiss more of sugar,” she said to herself, sticking the teaspoon into the confectioner’s sugar; she tapped on the side of the spoon so the sugar drifted into the creamy white mixture. She set down the teaspoon and picked up the spatula, and folded the glimmers into the frosting. She used her middle finger to give it another taste.  
She added more sugar in the same way. Folded it in. Gave it another taste but with her index finger.  
“There we go,” she concluded. The timer on the croissants made a light ding! and she set down the spatula, and picked up the oven mits to check the cookie sheet in the third oven. The outside crust of the croissants was light golden brown and glistened from all the butter she had put into them.  
“Oh, butter, you are quickly becoming my best friend,” she stated aloud with glee. She set the croissants on the counter behind her for them to cool off.  
Within a minute, the timer on Lars’ red velvet cake made a slightly lower ding! She reached onto the upper shelf over the ovens for a tooth pick. She stuck the pick into the cake batter on the right, and it came out clean.  
“Yes!” she declared in a hushed voice, even though she was the sole person in the whole building. She took the pans out of the oven and let them cool on the counter behind her. She took off the oven mits to help out a young man at the front of the bakery.  
It would be another twenty minutes before she could take Lars’ cake out of their pans, and frost them up, and put them into a separate box. The whole cake itself stood as tall as a water pitcher on the brand new wooden lazy Susan at the far end of the counter.  
“I want you to eat,” she whispered as the end of the spatula caressed over the smooth cream cheese frosting. She stroked the top of the cake as she spun it on the lazy Susan: the head of the spatula left a trail in the form of a spiral, until she reached the center. She stopped the spinning and used the head of the spatula to carve the arches of a number three and then an inverted arrow head to make a small heart. She then had an idea to make little flowers with sugar paste, but she had no idea if the bakery had any on hand, or if they had the right things to make it from scratch.  
“I want you to eat and fill your belly,” she whispered again, that time to the heart.  
“Who you talking to?” A voice behind her caught her off guard. Mia gasped as she turned to see Marcia standing in the doorway and tying the apron on over her body. She spotted the cake on the lazy Susan and frowned.  
“You—You already made Kirk’s cake?”  
“No, this is—come here.”  
Marcia peered behind her to make sure no one was coming in through the front door, and then hurried towards Mia at the far end of the counter.  
“I’m making this for Lars,” she confessed. Marcia gaped at her.  
“Seriously? Mia!”  
“I just—I just—”  
“Mia, we might be making cakes for special occasions now, but we’re a place for pastries not for making cakes for our little boy toys. It’s not in our budget and we’re already hard pressed to make pastries, anyways. I’m surprised you even found the time to whip up and bake this one. I came in early today because I wanted to get a head start on Kirk’s cake. Besides, Lars’ birthday isn’t for another month—”  
“I just want to get closer to Lars is all, Marcia,” she blurted out, interrupting Marcia. “Okay—I made a cake for him because I—I—”  
“Because you what?”  
“Because I—I like him. When we were in Seattle, he was just—he was so sweet, and kind, and—you know. Nothing like Wayne. He was by my side when I was in the hospital—I mean, come on, you saw him when I was unconscious. He also told me he worried about losing me.”  
Marcia blinked several times, stunned.  
“Really?”  
“Yes.” Mia turned and stared at her head on; Marcia gaped at the sight of her.  
“What—What happened here?” She gestured to the contusion on the side of her face. Mia chewed on her bottom lip.  
“Their bassist was killed in a bus accident recently, and they came home for a bit because of cancelled dates, and now they’re going international again. He’s afraid of losing me, Marsh. He’s afraid of something horrible happening to me and it’ll be like losing their friend again—”  
“Oh dear God, Wayne hit you, didn’t he.”  
Mia closed her eyes and bowed her head.  
“He also—” She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “—forced me into—having sex, too.”  
Marcia stood there in stunned silence, not knowing what to say right then. The front door opened and someone entered the bakery.  
“Anyone here?” the old man called out.  
“I’ll be right with you!” Marcia declared out the door. She returned to Mia and rested her hands on her shoulders.  
“Mia, I’m telling you this right now, not just as your colleague but as your best friend. Get away from Wayne. Get the hell away from him. Go find a women’s shelter after work today. Go there and stay there because they’ll help you and they’ll protect you. Or go to your parents, or Ashley, or better yet, go to Mom because she’s seen her share of bad men. She’ll know how to protect you if he comes after you. But get away from Wayne. Get the fuck away from him.”  
“What about Lars, though?”  
“He's—He’s going to have to know at some point. He’s going to have to know that not only is he the other man but the girl he’s seeing is being beaten and battered. How he reacts to it is anyone’s guess.”  
“What about this cake?”  
“Well, it’s already made so I say give it to him when they get here. But where you go in Wayne’s wake is up to you. We’ll talk more later as we’re making Kirk’s cake—I gotta take care of this gentleman in here.”  
And with that, Marcia wheeled around and strode out of the room into the front of the bakery. Mia gazed at the cake on the lazy Susan next to her. She stared at the spiral on the top and the small heart in the center. That lovely feeling inside her heart and her stomach, that feeling of baking a cake solely for Lars had disappeared. She sighed through her nose as she glanced over at the stacks of unfolded pink boxes in the corner, and ambled over to them for one of the narrow ones. As she unfurled it at the corners, and picked it up at the base, it became all too right at that moment. She had to come clean with Lars, given she now had to fend for herself.  
The rest of that morning seemed to trudge by as Mia and Marcia tended to the ovens and sold off the day’s pastries together to make up the loss from crafting Lars’ cake. By the time Mia’s shift came to a close, and the boys had not shown up to the bakery, they glanced at one another with solemn expressions upon their faces. She thought about what Marcia had told her earlier and wondered how she could break it to Lars that she was having an affair with him and she needed to leave her house. It was all too much to think about; she sighed through her nose when a young woman with a little girl stepped outside with a box of donuts. The two of them were alone in the bakery; she took off her apron and folded it up with quivering hands. She let out a long low sigh as she set it down on the table right next to her purse. She stared on at the two tier cake next to her—frosted with that same cream cheese frosting as with Lars’ cake but decorated with tiny white flowers made of gum paste they had whipped up on the spot in the back room, and resting inside of a box with the edge of the lid leaning against one side—and felt her heart pound even harder inside of her chest.  
“Where are they?” demanded Marcia, pressing her hands to her hips. “Kirk told me they’d be flying in from San Francisco and the flight was going to be like thirty minutes, if that.”  
“They're—They’re probably on their way.” Mia could hardly contain the hammering inside of her chest or the butterflies in her stomach. She huffed and panted to where her head started to spin. Marcia knitted her eyebrows at the sight of her.  
“Are you alright?”  
“No, I feel—I feel sick.”  
“Have a seat.” She gestured at the chair behind the cash register. Mia staggered towards the cash register and brought a hand to the wound there on her forehead. Her stomach turned but she needed to keep it together, especially for Lars. She rested her hands on her knees and sighed through her mouth again to try and soothe the spinning motion in her head.  
Not even two minutes had gone by when the black limo pulled up to the curb outside of the bakery.  
“That’s them!” declared Marcia, smoothing her apron. Mia peered out the window at the driver opening the rear door: James climbed out first with his blond hair glimmering in the gray late morning sunlight and his black overcoat wrapped snug around his tall wiry body. Jason followed wearing mirrored sunglasses and a black sweat shirt under a dark gray overcoat, then Kirk and Lars slid out of the back almost in unison in their heavy black coats.  
James jerked the door open and he stepped inside with a big grin over his face; Jason removed his glasses and folded them up into his pocket; Kirk showed them both a smile, and Lars raised his eyebrows and fluttered his lashes at Mia.  
“Good morning, gentlemen!” Marcia greeted them.  
“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” answered Kirk. He turned to Mia. “You okay?”  
“Just feeling a little dizzy,” she replied, breathing heavy. She gazed on at Lars and showed him a warm smile.  
“Hello, my love,” he said to her, his cheek bones filling out and turning bright pink from the chilly morning air outside.  
“Hello, darling,” she retorted. James rubbed his hands together.  
“So where’s that birthday cake?” he asked them.  
“Right back here.” Marcia held out her arm to the table top behind her and the two tiered cake. Kirk’s eyes widened at the sight of it.  
“Wow!” he proclaimed.  
“She—” She gestured to Mia. “—got a head start this morning and even a second one that’s in the back room here.”  
Mia glanced up at Marcia and she flashed her a wink out of their sight. She was about to climb to her feet when Marcia hurried out from behind the glass display to the back room. Lars lingered next to the register and kept his eye on Mia, who placed her hand on the edge of the counter to balance herself even though she never stood to her feet.  
“Are you okay?” he asked her in a soft voice. “You don’t look well.”  
“Yeah, you look like you’re about ready to pass out,” added Jason.  
“I’m just—not feeling well. I’m going to be going home soon anyways.”  
Lars leaned over the counter top for her hand and, careful not to throw her off balance even more, lifted it up to kiss the back. How she missed his soft warm lips, even if they were just on the back of her hand and not on her mouth. He stared into her eyes with his head bowed a bit so he peeked from under the edges of his bangs.  
Marcia returned into the room with the narrow pink box and placed it down on the counter next to Lars and Mia. She picked up the lid on the other box to close it up when James spoke again.  
“We’re going to be across the Pacific for the next two weeks,” he explained, “so we won’t be back here for Thanksgiving—but we’ll be holding it off until we get back. And I—well, we, I’m speaking on behalf of the four of us—wanted to invite you ladies can come join us if you’d like.”  
“Oh!” Marcia and Mia gaped at one another.  
“Where at?” asked the former.  
“Seeing as they were too kind to us and—you know, they helped us out finding Mia,” explained Kirk, “the guys from Soundgarden invited us to come to Seattle for that weekend. We’re gonna have a powwow of sorts on one of the islands, I forget which.”  
“Bainbridge,” corrected James.  
“Bainbridge Island, that was it! So yeah. What do you girls think?”  
“I'd—I’d love to,” replied Marcia. “I’ll run it by Sonia and Ashley and see if they want to come with, too.”  
“Me, too,” added Mia; she returned to Lars, whose warm little smile crept back over his face.  
“Alright!” declared Kirk, picking up the narrow box, the one with Lars’ cake. “So I might call you, Marcia, or Lars might call Mia, or James or Jason might call Ashley. But be on the look out for one of us to give you a jingle two weeks from now. And—” He beamed at the both of them as James took the larger box with Kirk’s birthday cake. “—thank you so much for the cakes.”  
“It’s our pleasure, Kirky,” said Marcia, blowing him a kiss. “And happy birthday, too.”  
“Happy birthday, Kirk,” added Mia.  
Jason pushed open the door and James and Kirk stepped outside past him with the boxes in hand. Lars lifted himself from the counter when Mia gestured for him to come closer again.  
“That second cake,” she told him in a whisper, “in the little box—”  
He nodded his head and raised his eyebrows at her.  
“—I made that for you.”  
“For me?” he echoed in a whisper.  
“Yes. And I want you to eat it. All of it.”  
He took a glimpse at Marcia, who leaned against the edge of the counter with a determined look upon her face. He returned to Mia and showed her a little smirk, before standing back upright to adjust the lapels on his coat.  
“Hey, Prince Pretty, let’s get a move on,” James called from outside the bakery door. “While we’re young.”  
Lars flashed Mia a wink before stepping outside to the cold morning and letting the door close behind him. Marcia ran her hand through her hair and sighed.  
“Well, there you have it, Marcia,” said Mia, steadying herself against the edge of the counter again. “I have found a way out of Wayne’s trap. I have no clue where Bainbridge Island is, and I’m positive he doesn’t know, either.”  
“Yeah, but Sonia and I both will be keeping close watch on you, though,” she advised her. “I don’t trust that dickhead as far as I can throw him. No way. Not with my best friend.”


	22. Chapter 22

“I don't have a clue where the nearest women's shelter is, Mia.”  
Sonia had shown up to the bakery within mere moments of the boys leaving to check up on Mia's first day back to work. She clasped her hands to her mouth when she noticed the bruise on the side of her face: she was about to tell about the scratches on her arms and her knees when Marcia interrupted to tell her sister what had happened. Sonia brought her hands to her chest and shook her head.  
“Are you sure?” asked Marcia.  
“Positive. If I knew, I'd tell it to you in a heartbeat.”  
“Well, I'm afraid that if she comes and stays with us, I'm afraid he'll track her down and do something to us—”  
“That's true.”  
“—otherwise she can come stay with us for as long as she needs.”  
“What about her parents?”  
“What about her parents?”  
“Where are they in all of this?”  
“I have no idea.”  
“Me, neither,” Mia confessed, resting her hands on her knees.  
“What about Ashley?” asked Sonia. “I can run back to the school real quick because she's got one more hour on her shirt, and I can tell her everything, and find out if she can do something.”  
“You know, the more I think about it, the more I feel like the same exact thing would happen there. Although it's hard to say because Liv's a reporter. Wayne wouldn't hear the end of it and an abuser would have to fucking dumb as hell to tangle with the press, especially Olivia Starr.”  
“Amazing you know that, Marcia,” remarked Mia.  
“Well, yeah. Our father—Mr. Bennett—was also Mom's pimp, and she did everything she could to get the two of us away from him. That's why we don't talk to him.”  
“He was smart to back away and break up with Mom when we were kids because of Liv, too,” added Sonia. The three of them fell into a brief silence until Marcia spoke again.  
“We could always hit up Mom again and Mia can go up to Seattle to stay with her.”  
“Yeah, but I'd have to leave this job and also my job at the salon,” Mia pointed out. “I've worked too hard to get these two jobs, too. God, I don't know what else to do—I just want to curl up and die.” She buried her face in her hands and closed her eyes. She thought about crying, but didn't have the tears in her to do just that. A knock on the glass panel of the door caught the attention of the three of them.  
“It's Lars,” announced Marcia; she opened the door, and Mia lifted her head and peeked out the window to see him huddled inside of his coat against the wind. “Hi—what're you doing here? You brought your cake back?”  
“I just came back to see Mia again.” He entered the bakery and that was when Mia spotted the narrow box tucked under his right arm. “Our flight doesn't leave for another hour and a half anyways. The three of them will be having breakfast somewhere here in town. And yes, this is that cake. But I brought it back for good measure, though.”  
He licked his bottom lip and gazed on at her. She eyed the box under his arm; it was that moment she knew about his intentions.  
“Do we have any milk on hand?” he asked Marcia and Sonia.  
“I don't—think so,” confessed the former. She squinted her eyes at him. “Why?”  
“I am going to need a glass of milk.” He returned to Mia once more and nodded his head to the side. He mouthed the words “follow me.”  
Marcia and Sonia gaped at one another in silence. Mia was ginger to climb to her feet as her head spun in circles upon rising from the her seat behind the cash register. She kept one hand on the edge of the counter to steady her balance, and then on the back of the glass display towards the end, where she met up with Lars and the pink box tucked under his arm. He put his other arm around her and led her into the back room, where they had lunch the second time around. Mia never saw him turn his head back and wave his index finger to Marcia and Sonia, but she kept her eye on the room before them.  
She left his arm to move the boxes in the same spot as before off to the side, but then he stepped in to move another one in front of her. He gestured to the top of the box for her to have a seat. Marcia poked her head into the room.  
“Would the two of you like forks?” she asked him in a soft voice.  
“You know I would.”  
“Wait. Wait a minute. Just—Just you?”  
“Yes.”  
Marcia knitted her eyebrows at him but then stepped back out of the room for a metal fork. Lars took a seat on the box opposite from her with the cake resting in his lap. He took the lid off the top and his eyes widened at the sight of the cake right before him. The corners of his mouth curled up into a small but sweet smile when he recognized the heart she had carved out on top of the cake; he took a glimpse up at Mia, who showed him a smile in return.  
“All for me?” he asked her.  
“All for you, papacito,” she answered.  
Marcia returned to the room for a metal fork to give to Lars.  
“Sonia—ran up the street to get you a glass of milk,” she sputtered out, her hand quivering as she handed it to him. She then turned to Mia, her upper lip trembling all the while. “I'm just gonna—sign out for the day now."  
“Are you alright?” he asked her, turning the handle of the fork around inside of his hand.  
“Yeah, I'm just—I just—” she stammered, running her hand along the side of the doorway. He knitted his eyebrows together but never lost that little smile on his face. “You're actually going to eat that whole thing? By yourself?”  
“Yes. Why?”  
“It just seems like a lot. And especially it being red velvet cake on top of that.”  
“I can handle it.”  
“He sure can,” added Mia. “I've seen him.” Marcia was to say something when something caught her attention at the front of the bakery. She turned her head again and darted behind the wall, out of their sight.  
“Sonia's probably back,” said Mia.  
“Probably,” echoed Lars. He hesitated for a moment before Sonia entered the room with a glass of pure white milk in her right hand and gave it to him.  
“Thank you, lovely,” he told her with his smile widening and his cheek bones filling out in response; she blushed at the sight of him before she ran out of the room. He set down the glass on the floor next to his feet and then straightened himself upright.  
Mia ran a hand through her hair before she rested her hands in her lap and watched him eat the whole cake right before her eyes.  
Every sink of the tines into the cream cheese frosting and the deep red cake, every bite down accompanied by a deep stare into her eyes, every swallow which resulted in him tilting his head back to expose his neck and throat, he made slow sweet love to the red velvet cake. Mia's head stopped spinning when he pressed on past the halfway point, where he sighed through his nose and began closing his eyes more. She noticed, beneath his shirt, his belly slowly swelling up from all of that cake.  
At one point, he leaned back against the stack of boxes behind him with his eyes closed. He was getting very full.  
He stayed there for a minute or two before he leaned forward again and handed the fork to her. She took the handle and peeked inside the box to see he had about a quarter left behind in the shape of a trapezoid. She sank the tines into one corner and lifted up a large piece, keeping her other hand underneath to catch any crumbs the whole time she brought it up to his mouth. He took in the whole bite in one fell swoop with a bit of cream cheese ending up on his upper lip.  
Mia used her index finger on her free hand to pick up cream cheese. He gazed on at it for a second before the tip of his tongue slithered out of his mouth and licked it off of the tip of her finger, and kept his eye on her all the while.  
She handed the handle of the fork back to him and he hiccuped, which prompted him to bring two fingers to his mouth before taking the fork back. He continued, all while eating at such a slow pace.  
Mia slid forward in her seat, closer to him, as he approached the end of the cake. All her problems and all her pain soon melted away.  
Light, soft groans emerged in his throat as he came to the other side of the box; she peered inside at the line of cream cheese frosting left on the bottom of the box and showed him a little grin.  
“And once again, my eyes were bigger than my stomach,” he croaked out, laying a hand on his belly, now bloated up to a little round bump under his shirt. He leaned the back of his head against the box behind him and groaned inside of his throat. Mia lifted the empty box off of his lap and lay it down on the floor next to his feet; she picked up the glass of milk for him to have a drink. His hand shook a bit as he took the glass and took a small sip and set the glass down next to his hip.  
“I won't be eating until we land in Japan probably—oh—ooh—oof—”  
He burped inside of his throat.  
“—mmm, oh, pardon me.”  
“I'd think you have had enough,” she told him in a low voice, slipping onto the top of the box next to him.  
“God, I can't believe I ate that whole thing—mmm—oh—ooh—ohhh, hello, darling—”  
She lifted the bottom hem of his shirt and unfastened the button on his jeans using only but her index finger and her thumb. He relaxed his whole body as his pants loosened up right underneath him. She lifted the bottom of his shirt even more to rub his belly; she kissed the patch of skin next to his navel.  
“Was that too much?” she kindly asked him.  
“I think so—that was a lot of fucking cake after all—” He took another sip of milk and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. She gave him another kiss in the same spot and then caressed the curvature of his belly with the tips of her fingers.  
“I just couldn't stop, though,” he confessed. “There was so—so much love inside of that cake—I needed to—”  
“You needed to eat it,” she finished for him.  
“Every last—fucking—part of it—” He burped inside of his throat again, this time a much louder and fuller belch. He further relaxed his body as Mia brought her head to his chest; he then licked his lips and took another sip of milk. She stroked the soft skin on his belly, going from the skin around his navel to his sides and then towards his chest. She lay the palm of her hand right over his stomach and kept her touch ever so gentle. He cracked her a dazed little smile.  
“This is probably—probably—this is probably the sweetest—sweetest—this is probably the sweetest belly rub you're—you're giving—you're giving to—” She cut him off by planting a delicate kiss on his lips, which tasted of butter and cream cheese.  
“—all manner of big apple sauce,” he blurted out. She giggled at him.  
“You're so full, you're not even making sense,” she pointed out.  
“Stop making sense if I might say so myself,” he sputtered. She giggled again, still rubbing his belly.  
“—look at me—all big and—bulging out—”  
“I'm looking,” she whispered, examining his warm skin, “you're so gorgeous right now.”  
“—you press one for Danish—”  
She inserted the tip of her finger into his belly button and he stuck out his tongue.  
“Murray Crimus,” he gurgled, belching inside his throat again. She chuckled again, this time bowing her head against his chest.  
“I'm making you another cake—”  
“No—no, please—behage, no, I can't—”  
“—for your birthday,” she resumed.  
“Oh. What about for—for—the day—the day I—grow as big—as big as—my big ass?”  
“Thanksgiving, you mean?”  
“Yeah.”  
“If you want.”  
“If we—If we do the kind of things that—that—you told me—over the phone—over the phone at Soundgarden's house.”  
“Of course. At Soundgarden's house?”  
“Okay. Yeah, Soundgarden's house.” He belched again and then followed it up with a soft moan. He lifted the glass of milk, and took another sip, and then gazed on at the wall opposite them.  
“I can't move,” he confessed.  
“No need to move,” she told him, kissing the side of his neck and the soft, gentle flesh right under his jaw. “No hay necesidad de moverse en absoluto.”  
She lay the side of her head on the top part of his belly as she pushed down the band of his underwear.  
“Just a little sleight of hand before you go,” she whispered, her fingers creeping down below his swollen waist. She stroked his shaft using the pad of her thumb and he groaned inside of his throat once again before he closed his eyes and relaxed even more.  
“Mia?”  
“Who's—Who's there?” Lars stammered, his eyes still closed.  
“Ashley,” Mia replied, and then tried to think of an explanation. “She and I are going to spend the rest of the day together.”  
“I—I see.” He took one last sip of milk before she lifted her head and took her hand out of his underwear to give his full belly a light little pat; she leaned forward to kiss him right above his navel. He licked his lips as she brought her face closer to his, and his eyelids drooped open.  
“The cake will be smaller next time,” she vowed in a light whisper. He swallowed and gazed into her eyes for a second before she kissed him on the mouth once more. She then took his hand and helped him onto his feet; he stumbled forward, with one hand to his belly and the other holding onto the empty glass, but he managed to keep his balance. Mia tugged down on the bottom of his shirt and gave him another light pat; she slid her hand around his waist to hold him for a moment.  
“Toma tu pastel y cometelo,” she whispered into his ear, “toma tu pastel y cometelo, papacito. Now, come on. Let's get out of here before someone notices what's up with the two of us back here.” She led him out of the back room to where Ashley was standing next to the glass display with her arms folded over her chest. She grinned at the two of them, but never said anything because she knew what they had done together.


	23. Chapter 23

Mia and Ashley helped Lars into the back seat of the car outside next to the curb. He wore a big goofy smile upon his face as they helped lay him down on his side and stretch out his legs; Mia rounded the trunk of the car to open the driver’s side door and reveal his face, upside down and blushed with a bright rosy pink and lined with his long wavy hair. He had closed his eyes and parted his lips; the tip of his tongue slithered out to wet those little red lips, which he followed up with a soft groan. She stooped down, and brushed back his bangs, and kissed the side of his head. The feel of his warm skin against her lips sent shivers down her spine to the space right between her legs.  
“Catch you later, baby boy,” she whispered; a smile crept over his face and the blush in his cheeks only brightened. She lifted her head to speak to his driver.  
“He has had a whole lot to eat,” she advised him, “so please drive carefully.”  
“Will do,” he replied with a nod.  
Mia closed the door, and doubled back around the trunk of the car, and climbed up onto the curb. She and Ashley waved them off and they pulled away from the curb; the two of them returned to the inside of the bakery. Ashley’s eyes gleamed at Mia.  
“God, Lars is so cute,” she said in a hushed voice.  
“He’s incredibly cute,” replied Mia, “and he gets even cuter when he’s all full because he can’t think or speak straight. He gets very primal, though, like I remember doing that when I went to go see them and he turned into an absolute machine at the show. I mean, he gets so horny and we do it when he’s stuffed full like a turkey like that.”  
“Oh, boy. Speaking of turkeys, I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving then. Because Mom and I are going to be there, and Marcia, Sonia, Mikayla, and Trent’ll be there, and that guy who helped find you—Jerry? He’s gonna be there, too. So is some redheaded guy named Dave. Now that I think about it, I can see that boy getting a little bit chubby after today. I’ve dated a couple of chubby boys before—all round and soft to the touch, not to mention so very warm. And, you know, winter’s coming, Mia. He’s gonna wanna cuddle and so when the opportunity arises, cuddle the shit out of him.”  
“He loves it when he gets all full like that and then I rub his belly for him.”  
“Oh, yeah. Keep doing that. When he starts getting a tummy, he will be perfect for that sort of thing. I can just see it getting so soft and tender between the two of you. And, not to mention, he will be absolutely perfect for spooning. When he starts getting love handles, stroke the hell out of ‘em. Just hold him, and feel him, and love him. If it were me, I would not stop touching and feeling that drop dead sexy body—”  
“Wait a minute, what about Wayne?” They stood there in the middle of the room in stunned silence.  
“What about that sad excuse of a human?”  
“What should I say to him about Thanksgiving?” Mia sputtered out, feeling her heart race inside of her chest. Ashley gaped at her.  
“Oh, shit. I never thought of that. Em—well, let’s go back to the house and then I’ll call Mom and tell her what’s up. Does she even know about this—this—this thing between you and Lars and Wayne?”  
“Actually, no. As far as she knows, I broke it off with Wayne.”  
“Shit.”  
“I know.”  
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—”  
“Yeah.”  
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—” Ashley began to pace to and fro. “—shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—” She clasped her hands to the sides of her head. “—shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT! Why the hell did you lie about that? And to Mom especially?”  
“Well,” Mia started with a terse tone of voice, “first of all, Ash, I had just gotten out of the hospital and Lars was standing right there, too. I had to cover my ass. Second, what the hell else am I supposed to say to your mom? That I’m cheating on my husband with the drummer of a rock n’ roll band? That would never fly with her, especially since she’s with the press and whatnot. I can just see it now: 'Lars Ulrich Caught Red Handed as the Other Man… and the Woman He’s With is Someone I Know.’ It’ll be the scandal of the year, if not the decade.”  
Ashley let out an exasperated sigh and pressed her hands onto her hips.  
“I don’t know about decade, but okay, fine, I think you have a point there. Especially given Mom’s prowess. But still, what should we do about Wayne, though? What if he wants to invite you to his parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner? What would you do then? What would you tell to him? And even if he doesn’t, what do you tell to Lars?”  
“I’ll sneak out and I’ll tell Lars that time just got away from me.”  
“Sneak out? Have you actually seen their house?”  
“Their house is the kind of house were you can indeed break loose from it. I’ll find my way out of there no matter what happens, Ash.”  
“Tell you what. If and when you do break out of their house, I’ll come and get you.”  
“Okay, maybe I’ll hide out in the bathroom and then climb out the window and into the backyard.”  
“Okay—I’ll park down the block so they won’t see me. Maybe give me some of your clothes so everyone won’t think you’re going spartan.”  
“Which means we’d have to go by the house.” Mia bowed her head and buried her face in her hands.  
“It’s okay. If he’s there, I’ll tell him that you want to spend the night with me tonight. And if he’s not, there won’t be a problem. Now, come on—this place is closed and people are going to see us in here. I also need to use to bathroom.”  
Mia had slung her purse over her shoulder and held her apron close to her body once she stepped outside and held the door for Ashley. The two of them walked down the sidewalk to her car, which she had parked in front of Mia’s car.  
“I’ll follow you back home,” said Ashley as she rounded the hood to the driver’s side.  
“Gladly,” replied Mia, climbing into the driver’s side of her car and setting her purse down on the floor on the passenger side. She pulled out first and drove down the street and turned to head back to the little blue and white house. The whole way back to the house, she pictured Lars with a sweet little protruding belly on his body. She thought about caressing the soft, smooth, delicate flesh on his waist and on the top part of his belly while standing behind him and kissing the side of his neck all the while. She thought about him feeling full and her touching him. So full and just a little bit plump to show it off as well.  
She thought about being playful and teasing him, stripping off his shirt and undoing his jeans, and then poking the softest part of his belly, and calling him a little piggy. But then she thought of turning right around and kissing his round face, which she foresaw growing fuller and rounder until he turned into the full moon. The biggest, strongest drummer in the world also managed to have a tiny bit of extra weight hanging onto his body.  
A part of her still couldn’t believe he had eaten that whole entire cake right in front of her. He wanted it, and he wanted it because she had made it for him and only for him. She wanted to make him breakfast and then take care of him for a whole day.  
Hold him, feel him, and love him, Ashley told her. Hold him, feel him, and love him. Love him. Love him and nourish him, but she also told herself to never let go of him. Never let go of his beautiful body, or of any beautiful part of him.  
Mia pulled into the driveway next to Wayne’s car and switched off the engine. She climbed out with her purse slung over her shoulder and her folded apron tucked under her arm; she spotted Ashley parked down the block. And she flashed her lights twice at her, and Mia waved to her in response.  
She stepped into the house, and the cold air hanging down from the ceiling of the foyer sent shivers over her body. Silence filled the house.  
“Wayne?”  
He stepped out of the bedroom doorway at the end of the hallway.  
“Hi,” he greeted her in a broken voice. “I’m getting that job, by the way.”  
“Oh, good!” she exclaimed, ambling down the hall towards him without taking off her purse or her apron. “I’m going to be having a little sleep over with Ashley tonight,” she told him in a lower voice as she came closer to him.  
“Oh?”  
“Yeah. I need a couple of changes of clothes.”  
“A couple?” he repeated as she slipped past him for her overnight bag in her closet and pack some of her things into it. She set down on the bed without taking off her purse.  
“Yeah, I want to have some options,” she told him. “I have to go back to work at the salon tomorrow, too.”  
“So is Ashley taking you back there?”  
“She sure is.” Mia put a clean pair of pants and a few shirts inside before folding in her apron, and her red lace bra and panties, and her teddies.  
“Wait, you’re taking your lingerie with you?”  
“Yes. It’s my lingerie. I can do whatever I want with it.”  
She pushed past him into the bathroom for her tooth brush, tooth paste, deodorant, shampoo, and conditioner. She was to head back out of the room when he stopped her right there in the doorway.  
“Mia—”  
“What?” She tried to step around him but he blocked her way out.  
“I’m not doing anything to you.”  
“What are you talking about?”  
“You know what I’m talking about. I’m not doing anything to you.”  
He clasped his hands to the sides of her face and stuffed his tongue into her mouth. His hot breath bursting from his mouth smothered her on the inside. Even though her arms cradled with her toiletries, she managed to tear away from him.  
“You taste like red velvet cake,” he growled.  
“Yeah—while we were making it today, I had some for tasting.”  
He wrinkled his nose.  
“You smell like—something. Like perfume. Like a man’s cologne.”  
“Busy day at the bakery today. Lots of men in the house.”  
He squinted his eyes at her.  
“I swear, I taste something else in there.”  
“No, it’s okay. There’s nothing. I just had some cake for tasting when we were making it today. And it was pretty damn good so I had some for myself. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. There’s nothing else to it. I swear.”  
“Don’t lie to me, Mia.”  
“I’m not.”  
“Don’t.”  
“I swear I’m not. Now, can you just—just—”  
“No. No, I won’t until I know you’re not lying.”  
“Wayne, I swear on my grandparents’ ashes, I am not lying to you!”  
He fumed at her in silence, meanwhile, she stood there with her arms full and the strap on her purse starting to slide down her shoulder and her upper arm. She worried about Ashley parked down the block and wondered if she began to grow impatient from the time spent inside the house. Wayne finally sighed and stepped out of her way, and Mia trotted across the hall to the bedroom to put her arm’s full of toiletries into the overnight bag and adjust the strap on her purse. She zipped up the bag and was about to leave the room with it when Wayne stopped her in her tracks once again.  
“I’m not doing anything to you,” he repeated. He then jerked his hand up to her neck; the fat sausages that were his fingers crept over the front of her throat, but he didn’t choke her. Her heart hammered inside of her chest at the sight of his hand right before her.  
“Now, if and when I find out you’re lying to me, then I might do something to you. And it’ll be damage that you or Ashley won’t be able to walk from. But, I won’t do it. At least, not right now.”  
He dropped his hand and pointed behind him.  
“Now, get out of my sight.”  
Mia huffed and bustled out of the room with her purse and her overnight bag slung over her shoulders. She never looked back as she hurried down the hall, and back outside to the gray late morning sunlight, and down the block to Ashley’s car. They both figured this was going to be regular thing, given neither Mia nor Ashley, Marcia, and Sonia knew about the nearest women’s shelter there in Portland. She went off to her jobs and then returned to the house, only to run off for a sleep over with one of the three of her friends. This dragged on for the next couple of weeks, at least until the boys returned home to the United States from east Asia.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Pi Day and I hope you all eat lots of pie for me tomorrow<3

The phone rang once Mia stepped through the front door of the house, still with her apron on underneath her jacket: it was her last full day of work before the two extra days off for Thanksgiving and she wanted to come home to lay down on the bed and take a nap. She had left her clothes in the trunk of Ashley’s car, but she knew she would have to run back to her house to pick them up again when they snuck up to Seattle that night. She bolted down the hall to the kitchen; she skidded into the doorway to find Wayne picking up the receiver upon the wall. Her mind went blank from the sight of him.  
“Hello?”  
Her heart hammered inside of her chest. She hoped it wasn’t Lars calling the house.  
Wayne turned to her with the receiver still tucked in his ear and with a baffled expression on his fat doughy face.  
“No—no one here by that name,” he said in an absent tone of voice. He hung up the phone and huffed. Mia tried to swallow down the hard feeling inside of her throat.  
“I'm—” she stammered. “—I'm—I'm—”  
“You’re what?”  
“Never mind.”  
“No, what were you going to say?”  
“I'm—who was that?  
“Eh, some guy calling for Sonia. Probably some guy at the school hitting her up before Thanksgiving break…”  
“For—Sonia?”  
“Yeah. Some guy—might’ve been a girl because the voice was so high pitched and scratchy.”  
She wondered if that was either Lars or Kirk who had called the house right then, and they were confused by the sound of Wayne’s voice on that end. She had her hopes, but nothing proved it.  
“Anyway, are you ready to go?” he asked her.  
“Go where?”  
“To my parents’ house.”  
She pursed her lips and swallowed. She hoped he would save their going to his parents’ house for Thanksgiving for the next day and then before leaving, she could call up Ashley in order to pick her up there. Her heart pounded even harder at the thought of that being either Kirk or Lars, especially Lars, who had called them. She thought about the questions either of them would ask her later on, but they would have to be saved for later instead; so instead, she sighed through her nose.  
“Yes. Just—let me take off my apron first.”  
“Okay, but hurry up, though. Dad tells me they’re getting started on the brining of the turkey and on prep, too, and so they want us there.”  
“Wait, tonight?”  
“Yeah. Don't—Don’t ask, Mia. Just take off your apron and let’s get into the car. We’re taking my car, too.”  
Mia sighed again and doubled back down the hall to take off her coat and then her apron; she hung it up on the hook next to the front door before she slid her coat back on over her body, and then slung her purse over her shoulder once again. She flung open the door again and she ambled down to the driveway to Wayne’s car. She sank down into the passenger seat with her purse in her lap; he lumbered out of the house and locked the front door. As he climbed into the driver’s seat, a small voice emerged in the back of her mind to tell her that Lars and Kirk were coming for her at the house; she couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew someone was coming for her.  
He squeezed into the driver’s seat next to her and shut the door next to his side. Mia winced at the sight of him fumbling with the keys and muttering under his breath. She watched him put the key into the ignition; the engine roared to life and they rolled back out of the driveway. She pressed her knees closer together right underneath the bottom of her purse.  
Despite wearing her coat, she shivered from the cold interior of the car. She pictured Lars snuggled next to her inside of her coat, cuddled up against her body and pressing his lips right underneath the nipple of her right breast all the while. She sighed through her nose and smiled at the thought; she peered out the window at the incoming menacing gray rain clouds covering the sky. She could only think that the rain fell in droves up in Seattle; she pictured Lars again, that time with ten extra pounds on his body. She thought about running her fingers through the wavy locks of his long beautiful hair and kissing the soft delicate skin of his lovely round face, even as Wayne swung the back of his hand onto her ear and the side of her face to grab her attention.  
“Are you listening? You’ve been staring off into space for the last five minutes!”  
“No, what’d you say?”  
“I told you when we get to the house, go into the kitchen to help out Mom with prep.”  
Mia sighed again and tried to return to the thought the whole drive to Will and Jen’s house. She struggled to bring it back all the way into the front foyer, which reeked of pickles and something else, something sour. She shuddered underneath her coat, even as Wayne shut the door behind them to keep the warm air inside of the house. She clung to her purse as if it was about to get away from her; Jen raised an eyebrow at her as they stepped into the living room.  
“What’s the matter, Mia?”  
“I'm—I’m freezing.”  
“Aw, I’m sorry. Here—let’s turn up the thermostat—” She brushed by her and down the hall to switch up the heat; Mia sidled into the kitchen for a glass of water before she stopped right there in the entrance. The whole top of the counter had crowded with all of the trimmings and the food for the big night the next night; stuffed in one corner stood the tall metal vat for brining the turkey. She thought about her describing Lars as a stuffed turkey with the red velvet cake: she peered over at the poor turkey itself, stripped out of its wrapping paper, sprawled out on the counter, and with a shiny damp looking gloss on the top side of the skin. It was as if either Will had taken it out of its protective wrapping and left it there for who knows how long. Mia gagged at the sight of it and was about to hurry out of the room when Jen stopped her in her tracks.  
“Where you going?”  
“The—bathroom,” was all Mia could tell her. Jen knitted her eyebrows as if about to question her.  
“Is everything okay between you and Wayne, hon?” she asked in a low voice. Mia chewed on her bottom lip. Jen peered behind her for a second and returned to her.  
“Is everything okay between the two of you? It’s okay—if there are some issues between the two of you. I’ll bring it up to the both of them.” She brought her voice down a notch so they were out of earshot. Jen peeked over the top of her glasses at the left side of Mia’s face.  
“What happened?”  
“He—smacked me.”  
“Wayne smacked you? My son smacked you?”  
“It was to—get my attention.”  
“Still he smacked you.”  
Mia shifted her weight right before her as they both slipped into brief silence.  
“I also have—scratches on my arms and my knees—from a bout of love making recently. They are just now healing.”  
“Scratches? Like from his finger nails?”  
She nodded her head.  
“I will talk to him, don’t you worry, Mia, honey. When the two of you got married, you became like a daughter to me. In fact—where my family’s from, Greece, we don’t have a word for in-law. It’s just daughter, or mother. So you are like my daughter, and there is no way I’m going to let some serious harm happen to my daughter.”  
“Be gentle, though,” she warned her.  
“Mia, sweet heart—he’s my son. I’m always gentle with him, even when he’s in trouble.”  
Jen put her arms around her and held her close for a moment, and then backed away, and down the hall to fetch Wayne and Will.  
But that was Mia’s window to escape. She darted out of the kitchen, through the dining room and the living room, and to the front door. She threw open the door and bolted down towards the sidewalk; she took a glimpse down the street and recognized the headlights of Ashley’s car rolling up to her on the right. The car slowed to a stop before the curb and Mia rounded the hood to the passenger door. Careful not to bring too much attention to herself, she ducked down and hid her purse on the floor next to the center console and the parking lever.  
“You ready to go?” asked Ashley, right as soon as Mia shut the door and buckled into her seat.  
“Step on it,” she commanded without a second thought. Ashley shot forward before flipping a turn in the middle of the street, and then they sped away down the street and towards the nearest ramp onto the freeway to Seattle.  
Mia ran a hand through her hair and let out a loud sigh.  
“Holy—Holy crap,” was all she could say right then.  
“Kirk called your house on accident,” explained Ashley. “He was trying to call Sonia. So of course he got all manner of confused when he heard his voice, and so he asked around for Sonia.”  
“Yeah, that’s what Wayne told me,” replied Mia. “I was freaking out because I literally thought it was either Kirk or Lars calling right as I walked into the house after work—”  
“—and then he recalled Sonia and asked her what was up, and she got all standoffish and put him on the other line and called me to tell me about it. I just got a hunch and so I boogied over to that house as fast as I could. We’re going to Seattle a day early, apparently. Our four boys are all up there right now. And your clothes are still in the trunk, too. I never took them out of there.”  
“God, Ash, timing is literally everything.” Mia sank down inside of her seat as they merged over to the on-ramp heading north. She tugged the edges of her coat over her chest to keep in the warmth. “When I got home from work today, I just wanted to kick back and relax for a bit.”  
“Is there a reason why you guys went to Wayne’s parents’ house a day early?”  
The tires of the car began to grow louder with the changing pavement from the on-ramp to the four lanes of the freeway. Orange light from the street lamps lining the guard rail shone into the car in a flash and then faded out to darkness.  
“He told me we had to help them out with preparation for the dinner tomorrow night, but that still doesn’t make no sense. I went into the kitchen and found the food strewn all over the counter top, including the turkey. That looked like it had been sitting out for a while: there was this weird sheen on the top of it.”  
“That’s insulting. That’s insulting to you, that’s insulting to Jen, and that’s insulting to the creature that gave its life so the three of them could eat it.”  
“Jen also noticed that Wayne had hit me and vowed to go talk to him. That was when I ran out of there as fast as I could.”  
“Back the fuck up, Wayne hit you again?”  
“Yeah, he was trying to get my attention and he slapped me on the side of the face. Jen spotted the mark on my face and told me she’ll talk to him. She also told me she looks at me like a daughter, too.”  
“Really? Jen Davidson?”  
“Jen Davidson, exactly. Took me by surprise, too.”  
Ashley gaped at her for a few seconds in the dim light and then returned to the road before her in stunned silence. Mia raised her hands to her shoulders and gave herself a light massage. How she wanted Lars to hold her right then.  
“So the boys are in Seattle right now?” recalled Mia.  
“Yeah, when Kirk called Sonia, he told her they had just landed at the airport and were headed for the ferries out to the islands. He said the house we’re all bunking in is one of those big cabins you see in like Wyoming or some place real rural. We’d better hustle, too, because the ferries only go out to the islands until nine o'clock because of the holiday weekend, and it’s a quarter to six right now, and it takes an hour just to get to the outside of Seattle. Marcia, Sonia, Mikayla, Trent, and Mom all will be coming up tomorrow. And I should tell you this right now, too.”  
They glanced at each other in the darkness again: the orange light from a street lamp on an overpass shone in through the windshield onto Ashley’s red hair and into her eyes at that moment. Mia noticed the mischievous grin upon her face.  
“What’s that?”  
“Kirk said Lars has put on a little weight.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. No idea how much but his face has gotten slightly fuller and rounder, and his body’s a bit thicker, too—yeah. That red velvet cake started something a couple of weeks ago—he’s been ravenous lately, like Japan and China and South Korea and the Philippines have been serving him some rather delicious food. He’s starting to get a little junk in the trunk.”  
Mia snuggled down in her seat and stuffed her hands into her pockets. She gazed out the window at the pitch black waters of the Columbia River flowing out from under the draw bridge, and the glimmers of white light from Vancouver resting on the other side; she pictured herself laying behind him in bed and holding him around his waist. She imagined his flesh feeling so soft and tender to the touch; she couldn’t wait to feel him. Ashley glimpsed over at her once, twice, three times in the interweaving darkness and picketing lights from the bridge; the fourth time she showed her a playful smile.  
“You’re feeling good, aren’t you?” she asked Mia.  
“When I see him, I’m going to give him a little fondle. They’re not called ‘love handles’ for no reason, after all.”  
“Oh, ho, I fucking love you, Mia!”  
They continued on throughout the darkness, through Vancouver and the forest. When they wove their way through Olympia, Ashley turned on the heater, which only helped Mia relax even more. She thought of laying in one of the guest beds with Lars after Thanksgiving dinner and making the sweetest of love to him.  
Soon the lights of downtown Seattle dotted the darkness; Mia recognized the sliver of blue and white that was the Space Needle pressed amongst the taller buildings. Ashley kept them on the road through Sea-Tac before she took the one exit, which in turn led them down to the harbor and the main ferry heading out to Bainbridge Island.  
The white street lamps flooded into the car along the street towards the pier and the parking lot across the street. Ashley bounded into the lot and took the spot closest to the entrance. She switched off the heater before killing the engine; they climbed out of the car in unison. Mia slung her purse over her shoulder and hurried to the trunk for her overnight bag with her clothes.  
Once Ashley locked the doors, they used the light from the street lamp across the block to cross over to the long wooden pier for the penultimate ferry out to Bainbridge Island and their little place to stay for the long weekend.  
Mia recognized James’ long blond hair and Jason’s flowing golden hair, both of which glowed against the pitch darkness of the night. Kirk seemed to rise out of the black waters of the Puget Sound, but she came for Lars, who stood there waiting for her with the same plush black leather coat, snug black jeans, and black pointed boots. He showed her a grin once they had sprinted up to the pier, and she noticed his face, indeed now a lot rounder and more plush looking, complete with a slight double coming in underneath his chin.  
“Hello, my honey pie,” he greeted her. She put an arm around him, and kissed him on the soft skin on his face, and then planted a light kiss on his lips.  
“Hello, papacito rico,” she whispered into his face; her hand slithered under his jacket and his shirt to the skin on his waist. Indeed, some extra flesh began to come in over his hip and on his belly; his skin felt like fresh, smooth butter in the palm of her hand. He gazed into her eyes and licked his bottom lip.  
“Like what you feel here?” he whispered back to her.  
“I do.”  
“Hey, love birds, let’s mosey on over to the island while we’re young, eh?” Jason called out.  
“Shall we?” Lars raised his eyebrows at her.  
“We shall,” she replied, keeping her arm around him as the six of them headed down the pier to the massive, intimately lit ferry waiting for them.


	25. Chapter 25

The interior of the ferry, while bathed in warm golden light, was shrouded with cold from the silvery seats lining the butter yellow metal railing. They huddled onto the port side and took the series of empty seats peering out to the darkness hanging over the Puget Sound; the amber lights from the outer part of the ferry reflected onto the black waters. Lars and Mia took the seats leaned against the rail looking out to the waters, while James and Ashley nestled down across the aisle from them and Kirk and Jason took the pair of seats to Lars' right. They were the sole ones in the whole part of the ferry.  
Mia set down her overnight bag in the narrow compartment next to her chair and nestled down in the seat. She tugged the edges of the coat over her body and shuddered.  
“Are we the only ones here?” asked Jason as he took a glimpse about the area.  
“I think we are, man,” replied Kirk, stuffing his hands into his pockets and crossing his right leg over his left. He brought his shoulders closer to his ears. “Fuck, I just got a chill,” he grumbled. Mia shivered again, a shudder much larger than his; Lars glanced over at her with a look of concern upon his face.  
“Are you cold?” he asked in a low voice.  
“Yeah. Very much so, too.”  
He lifted his arm behind the back of her head and neck and gestured for her to move closer to him.  
“Come here—”  
Mia peered across the aisle at Ashley, who snuggled up next to James against the cold metal seats. Kirk and Jason, meanwhile, hunkered down together on their right like a pair of black birds. She leaned the side for Lars' body and sank down next to him so as to lay her head against his chest. She slid her arm underneath his coat to hold his waist. Her fingers slithered around his hip to his lower back. Through the fabric of his shirt, she could feel the warmth of his soft flesh. Her elbow and the inside of her arm pressed against his belly; he put his arm around her to bring her closer to him.  
She felt the ends of his soft hair caress against the side of her face as he bowed his head over her. She thought about snuggling even closer to him in the bed in the cabin.  
“Aw, so cute!” declared Ashley.  
Mia lifted her other arm to pull the side of her coat to try and keep him warm, and to hide their cuddling from the four of them, but it was useless. James put his arm around Ashley and she huddled closer to him in response. The ferry drifted out of the harbor and into the pitch darkness; Lars meanwhile leaned closer to Mia's ear.  
“Let me fuck you tonight,” he whispered over the swirling waves outside of the boat.  
“No,” she whispered back into his face.  
“I want to fuck you.”  
“No. No, no, no, no, no—”  
She lifted herself off of his chest, but she never moved her hand off of his waist, and stared into his round, full face; he shook his head and his bangs fluttered down over his eyes.  
“I need a haircut,” he told her.  
“No, you don't.”  
“Well, at least just a little trim on my bangs. I think we all could use a little trim. By the way, is that your hand?”  
“No, it's something else holding onto your little love handle,” she teased, using the tip of her finger on her free to tap the tip of his nose. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Kirk staring at the two of them with a little smirk upon his face. But she didn't mind in the least when she leaned in closer to Lars' ear.  
“When we get to the cabin, I want to you strip for me.”  
He raised his eyebrows and a light pink blush crossed over his face. He didn't say anything but he knew what she wanted, and she could sense it on him. She cuddled closer to his warm body as they pressed on over the pitch dark Puget Sound, with the dark waters sloshing against the side of the ferry all the while, until the low golden lights from the edge of Bainbridge Island emerged outside of the ferry. They seemed to approach them at a snail's pace, such that the six of them were eager to board off of the ferry and to the black van parked at the end of the dock.  
Mia was about to lay her overnight bag in the rear of the van when she recognized the reddish hair in the front seat.  
“Liv!” she declared; Olivia turned her head to show her a big grin.  
“Miss Mia!” she replied. Mia set her bag into the spot behind the wayback, only to notice the back was entirely vacant. “Where are your and Ashley's things?”  
“At the cabin, of course,” she answered. “You think we ladies would go without clothes for four days solid? I think not.”  
“It's one thing when we do it,” James pointed out. Ashley took the front seat next to her mother, while Kirk, James, and Jason filed into the plush eggshell white seats making up the wayback, and then Lars and Mia took the ones in the middle of the van. Once the doors were closed and the darkness fell over their heads, Olivia switched the engine on and they rolled forward, away from Eagle Harbor.  
Mia peered out the window to the darkness and the tiny, low houses lining the road; she tried to picture what the cabin might look like when she felt something on the top of her left knee. In the dim light from the numbers on the screen of the car radio in between Olivia and Ashley, she noticed Lars' fingers creeping onto her knee and towards the inside of her thigh. She hoped Kirk, James, and Jason couldn't see him, but at the same time a tiny voice in the back of her mind told her to let them look if they were doing just that.  
She raised her gaze to Lars' face, and he blew his bangs up from his eyes to make it look as though he wasn't looking at her. Mia licked her lips; she thought about taking him to the first empty room in the cabin and having sex with him right there. But she had to keep it together for a little while longer as they wound their way through the trees and up a slight hill, until they reached the long low wooden cabin against the pine trees.  
“Ben lives about two miles from here,” Olivia told Ashley.  
“So he's going to be the first one here tomorrow,” she answered.  
“More than likely, yeah.” Olivia turned the engine back over and took the keys out of the ignition. They all piled out of the car onto the dark concrete; Jason opened the rear hatch of the van for Mia's overnight bag and handed it to her. She thanked him and slung it over her right shoulder, and her purse over it. Olivia pushed the front door open for all of them; Ashley stepped inside first, followed by James and Kirk, and then Mia followed right behind. Before them stood the foyer which had a long low table at the far end before a large bay window peering out to the darkness; to the left was a hallway with the master bedroom at the very end and a stairwell leading to the rooms upstairs, and the entrance to the kitchen; to the right stood the vast living room with a high ceiling and a stone hearth for the fireplace. The walls of the cabin were comprised of a honey colored wood that warmed up the place with one glance.  
Lars and Jason entered the cabin right behind her; the former put his arm around her and stared into her eyes, while the latter darted past them down the hall to the bathroom.  
“So do we choose any room or—?” asked Lars; Mia glanced down at the bottom of his shirt and the fabric hugging him around his waist.  
“Any room, mister,” answered Olivia; he flashed Mia a mischievous smirk when she used her left hand to grab onto the crotch of his jeans. He raised his eyebrows at her and he chewed on his bottom lip.  
“Make yourself at home,” she whispered into his face, moving her thumb and her index and middle fingers around on the fabric of his jeans to massage what was inside of there before letting go of him. She wheeled around and headed into the corridor and the stairwell to the second floor. Ashley pushed the first door on the right open and turned her head to see Mia walking towards her.  
“I think the room down the hall here is perfect for you and your mister-ess,” she said in a low voice, gesturing to the room two doors down.  
“Mister-ess?” echoed Mia.  
“Mister-ess. If he were a girl, he'd be a mistress but since he's a boy, he's a mister-ess.”  
She strode past Ashley to the room next door to the upstairs bathroom and pushed open the door to reveal the darkness in the room. She pressed her hand to the wall on her left and felt a metal doorknob. She figured that was the closet and kept going until she came to a corner and the top of a lamp shade. She reached underneath the edge of the shade and clicked on the lamp, which bathed the room in pale yellow light. The head board of the queen sized bed stood against the wall before her right next to the nightstand; past the bed stood a small dark wooden dresser and the window, which was covered by filmy white lace curtains. To her right stood a small table with a pair of spindly chairs.  
She ambled over to the table and set her purse down on the top, and then she put down her overnight bag on the floor. She thought about Lars in the kitchen downstairs and decided to surprise him. She closed the door, and then stripped off her coat and lay it on the table next to her purse; her top and her jeans soon followed. Mia stooped over to open her overnight bag and change into the red lace; she lay the bra and the panties on top of her coat and took off her current ensemble. She stood there, stark naked, in the middle of the room, hearing the voices from downstairs emerge through the floor underneath her feet.  
The cool, crisp air in the room fell upon her skin and thus sent a wave of goose pimples all over her nude body; she glanced down at her bare breasts and her rising nipples, and the bumps covering her belly.  
She picked up the bra and slipped it on over her breasts: her nipples still pointed out even with the delicate lace protecting them from the cold. She put on the panties over her hips and her butt, and she stood there for a second, letting her body take in the cool air some more before she turned for the bed.  
There was a knock on the door.  
“Mia? Are you in there?” She knew that Danish accent.  
“Yes, I am, papacito,” she replied in a light airy voice. The door slowly opened and he stepped into the room without his jacket. His eyes widened at the sight of the scant red lace on her thick body. He shut the door behind him and bowed his head.  
“That's a great look for you, honey pie,” he told her in a low croak of a voice. “Quite dangerous, too. Dinner's about twenty minutes out.”  
“That is perfect.” Mia climbed onto the bed spread, and crawled to the middle of the bed, and rolled over onto her back. He tossed his hair back from his face and his shoulders and then showed her the light gleam in his eye.  
“Come here—” She reclined back on her hands and stretched out her legs. Lars flashed her a smirk, his cheek bones filling out like plump little apples.  
“Hang on, skat—” He raised a finger at her, and then he reached down the bottom hem, and peeled off his shirt to show off his body.  
His skin had grown pale from the dark nights and waning sunlight in Asia, but even from her spot on the bed, she could tell his skin had become smooth and soft like melted butter. He stood upright to show her the incoming toned muscles on his chest, which gave him some more depth, and the slight rounded curve on the lower part of his belly; he lay his shirt over the back of the chair and flicked his hair back from his face. Mia leaned back on her elbows to show off her body.  
“Come on over here,” she coaxed him, tilting back her head and showing him her neck. Lars sidled over to the lamp resting upon the nightstand and held his arm under the edge of the shade. She stared on at his belly button and the slight thickness on his waist, and nibbled on her bottom lip.  
“Shall I turn off the light?”  
“Por favor, baby boy. Come here and let me touch your body. Let me feel you. Déjame sentirte.”  
“Ohhh, I love it when you speak to me in your native tongue.” He clicked off the light, and the room fell dark except for the slight stream of blue light through the crack in the door behind him; Lars climbed onto the bed next to her and reclined on his side. He stroked the center of her chest with the tips of his index and middle fingers and brought his face closer to her to where she could feel his breath through his nose.  
“So,” he started in a soft tone of voice, “are you and I going to behave like a couple of little nasty dogs again or—shall we turn into something else for the time we've got right now?”  
“I'd like to make love,” she told him. “I want to feel you some more.”  
“Ah, so you like the little sushi rolls coming in on my hips, don't you?”  
“On your tummy, too. You're so warm and soft—”  
“Just you wait until I'm all full of dinner tomorrow night.”  
“Oh—God. All the mashed potatoes and gravy inside of you… And have it go all over your body, too?”  
“More pushing, I might say.” In the dim light, she could see him wink at her as a few tendrils of his hair cascaded down upon her face. Mia thought about her dreams with him, and the very thought of him being a bit rounder only excited her, making her heart pound faster inside of her chest and a wet sensation emerge between her legs. She pressed her hands to the sides of his face and caressed his skin, so soft and gentle and smooth to the touch. Her fingers wandered down to the sides of his neck and onto his shoulders, and he drifted down onto her.  
He lay his body next to her and held onto her shoulder to steady himself. He pressed his lips to hers once, twice, three times; on the fourth kiss, she dropped her hands to his hips and pressed the tips of her fingers into those delicate but definite bundles of fat right inside of his flesh. So soft.  
She squeezed him as he continued to kiss her on the lips; when he moved his mouth to the side of her face, her fingers wandered to the thickened flesh on his waist just to feel him. So, so soft, and so sexy.  
“I should tell you,” he whispered to her at one point, “when I was in the kitchen a bit ago, I noticed some Swedish meatballs in the fridge. We might have them with our dinner tomorrow evening. Or perhaps on Black Friday.”  
“Swedish meatballs, but not Danish ones.”  
“Nah, I've got the Danish ones right here, skat—”  
She couldn't see anything but she could feel him undoing his jeans. He pressed his body closer to hers as he continued to kiss her. His breathing picked up with every sweet caress against her neck; a soft groan emerged from the inside of her throat as she squeezed his little love handles. Everything was so soft and warm, and his lips were the icing on the cake. His lower belly brushed against the side of her hip.  
“Your tummy all full—all full and soft—”  
“All the belly rubs, darling—” he breathed out.  
“Every—last—one—”  
“Let's take it up a notch, you sexy girl—”  
A knock on the door startled both of them.  
“Lars? Mia? You two in there?”  
“God fucking damn it, it's James.” He lifted his head. “Yes we are!”  
“What do you need?” Mia followed up, her voice breaking.  
“Ah, nothing—just wanted to see who's taking what room—dinner's ready, too—”  
“Alright, man, we'll be right there.”  
Lars bowed his head over Mia's chest.  
“Again, right where it was getting interesting,” he said in a muffled voice.  
“We will resume after dinner,” she advised him.  
“And pick it up with a nice belly rub, oh, you're so good.”  
“And maybe—just maybe—I will let you rub my belly, too.”  
“Oh, God—you're more than good. Come on, let's get dressed.”


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You let me violate you,  
> you let me desecrate you,  
> you let me penetrate you,  
> you let me complicate you.  
> -”Closer”, Nine Inch Nails

Lars slid his shirt back on over his body right as he and Mia stepped outside of the room. She stood at the stairs with her hands pressed to her hips and waited for him to fasten up his jeans. He flashed her a little smirk and she gave him a light peck on the cheek before they descended the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she peered up at his holding the side of his face with the tips of his index, middle, and ring fingers and staring up at her from underneath his bangs.  
“Did you like that?” she asked him in a gentle voice.  
“Later on, do that again, but on—here—” He lay a hand to the bottom of his shirt.  
“Of course, baby.”  
Once they had reached the landing, Lars tossed his head back and ran a hand through his hair so she could see the creamy smooth skin beneath his jaw and on his neck. Then he rubbed his hands together upon seeing Ashley, Olivia, James, Jason, and Kirk congregated there in the warm lit kitchen.  
“So what have we got here for tonight?” Olivia and Ashley turned from the silvery stove top before them with big smiles upon their faces.  
“Swedish meatballs—” began the former; they took a glimpse at one another and Lars raised his eyebrows at her and she fluttered her right eyelid just light enough for him to see her wink at him. “—with some mashed potatoes and gravy, and chopped, sautéed asparagus.”  
Out of the corner of her eye, Mia noticed Lars licking his bottom lip and then sticking out his tongue at her. She playfully rolled her eyes at him, but she knew what he meant by that. He was going to be dining well that night, with those lush meatballs and those silky potatoes, and those bits of asparagus cooked in salt, pepper, and a bit of good fat, and with all of them in the same room no less.  
Once Olivia and Ashley had grabbed their plates and served themselves up helpings of each, Jason, James, and Kirk followed right behind them, and then Lars and Mia brought up the rear. She watched him scoop up the large golden brown meatballs covered in that light sauce with the grated metal spoon, and then lay the head of the spoon upon the surface of the plate, and then angle it in order to slide them off. She was somewhat amazed that they looked so good despite being frozen for a time in the freezer.  
He then picked up the wooden spoon for the potatoes, followed by the black ladle for the gravy of which he drizzled a fair amount onto the potatoes; he then scooped up several pieces of the asparagus with the metal tongs before taking his seat next to Jason at the heavy stone bar in front of the stove. Mia followed suit on all the dishes before she took her seat next to Lars. Kirk, James, Olivia, and Ashley stepped into the front foyer to sit at the long narrow table.  
She watched him pick up his fork and start eating those meatballs. He took his first bite and the juices from the inside trickled down his chin.  
“Ah, fuck—” he said with his mouth full. Jason handed him a paper napkin.  
“Thank you—damn good balls, though.” He wiped his mouth and she leaned over closer to his ear.  
“I thought that to myself when I sucked on yours,” she whispered and he nearly gagged on his mouth full. Jason peered behind Lars' head to flash her a grin.  
“What'd you say?” he chuckled.  
“Mm-mm, no,” pleaded Lars as he waved his free hand about. He swallowed and his face flushed with embarrassment. “You tryin' to choke me?”  
Mia nibbled on her bottom lip. His chubby apple cheeks only grew more pink.  
“I need to stop—no, God dammit!” He bowed his head, but his cheeks only got rounder and fuller and more flushed.  
“What did she say, Lars?” Jason laughed.  
“You really don't wanna know—now let me just eat my food.”  
Lars hesitated for a second before turning his head to look at Mia with big puppy dog eyes.  
“Shut up and eat your din-din, big boy,” she told him, dipping her fork into the potatoes.  
“If I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase 'big boy,'” muttered Jason, taking a sip from his water glass.  
“That's what she said—OH SHIT!” Lars clasped his hands to his mouth while his face turned from bright pink to crimson. Jason spat out his water over the counter and the stove top, and the three of them erupted into laughter.  
“Oh, God—” Mia clapped her hands together. Lars rested his elbows on either side of his plate and hid his face with the insides of his hands. Jason wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before leaning back against the wall and giggling like a madman.  
They sat there laughing for a few minutes before Lars set his arms down on either side of his plate. He hung there over his food for a second, taking in the aromas of the meatballs and the potatoes, before turning his head to Mia.  
“You're still wearing that red lace under your clothes are you?” he asked in a near whisper.  
“Of course. Never took them off.”  
“Okay.” He nodded his head and picked up his fork again. Jason kept chuckling even as he started eating again himself. Mia shook her head and returned to the dish in front of her. The meatballs were smooth and buttery with the right amount of spice and bread crumbs mixed inside, while the potatoes felt like the smoothest and silkiest of heavy cream inside of her mouth. The combination of both along with the asparagus warmed her up on the inside with each and every bite.  
Every so often, she took a glimpse over at Lars and his slow eating of all of his food, in particular the meatballs; once he picked up his last meatball in that one helping and inserted it into his mouth.  
She watched him close his eyes and take in every flavor, every bit of sauce, every grain of black pepper against that lush beef and pork and bits of bread crumb, all against the sides of his tongue before sliding down his throat and warming up his stomach even more. He hesitated there for a few minutes; Mia heard soft little groans escaping from his throat. She picked up a piece of asparagus and slipped it into her mouth. It tasted green, but the pepper and the butter added a bit of warmth.  
She thought of reaching underneath the bar to stroke his knee but he soon picked his plate, and stepped behind her, and rounded the bar to the stove for seconds.  
“I wonder if Ben's a big eater himself,” Ashley wondered aloud from behind him as she entered the room for another helping herself.  
“How big is he?” asked Lars as he scooped up seconds of the meatballs.  
“According to Mom, he's well over six feet in height. You, me, and Mia all would be dwarves compared to him. Six feet and lanky like a rag doll—ooh! Shovel me some more of those rad meatballs, please.”  
“Gladly—” Lars rested the head of the spoon onto her plate before taking seconds of the potatoes and the asparagus. He returned to his spot on the bar next to Mia and pressed onward. Ashley eagerly disappeared back into the next room.  
“Jeez, dude,” remarked Jason as he took his final bite of asparagus. Lars had taken seconds that were a bit larger than his first helpings.  
“What? I'm hungry. And these meatballs are divine. I frankly do not care if they're frozen, either.”  
Mia climbed to her feet for another round of potatoes, but she took a smaller serving that time: she wanted everyone to have more if they wanted to have seconds for themselves. She returned to her spot and continued eating until Jason spoke up again.  
“Did either of you cuties see like a—linen closet or something upstairs?” he asked them.  
“I think there is,” admitted Lars; he turned to Mia, still with his mouth full. “Did you see one upstairs?”  
“I didn't. But I'm sure there is one, though.”  
He returned to Jason. “It's either upstairs or down the hall where the bathroom is. Why—you wanna—you wanna—have a—toga party later on tonight?”  
“A toga party?! Nah. I just want to take a shower after dinner.”  
“I see.” He turned his head again to look at Mia in the eye with his eyes closed part of the way.  
“Wanna have some more fun when we're done here?” he asked her.  
“Of course,” she answered with a small but definite smile.  
They sank back into silence as they finished their dinner. When he was done, Lars picked up the napkin Jason gave him and wiped his mouth off; he rested his chin in his left hand and closed his eyes. Mia glanced underneath the bar at him undoing the button on his jeans again, this time using his right hand. She smiled at him again; he had had enough.  
Jason climbed to his feet and rounded the bar to rinse off his plate and his fork and put both into the drainer; Mia and Lars soon followed right behind him. As they stood next to each other there at the sink, she lightly bumped her hip against him.  
“Watch it there, honey pie,” he warned in a voice low enough so Jason wouldn't hear but loud enough so she could hear over the trickle of the warm water from the faucet head. Once Jason dried off his hands, he stepped out of the kitchen and headed into the next room. Lars bowed his head closer to Mia.  
“Let's look for a second closet,” he suggested.  
“Why a closet?” she asked.  
“Because if anyone comes up to the room again like what James did earlier, I don't want them to walk in on us having a moment. I didn't see a lock on the door.”  
“I see. Here—I'm almost done so I'll take your fork—and put it here in the drainer.”  
He switched off the water and then they dried off their hands together on the same towel. As she folded up the hand towel and hung over the handle of the oven, Lars pressed a hand to the bottom of his shirt. She noticed his jeans were still undone and the fabric of his shirt started to hug his belly. She gestured for him to follow her out to the downstairs hallway. Mia spotted the bathroom door and then the master bedroom at the end of the hall; across from the bathroom was a door hanging slightly ajar.  
“There's a closet!” she declared in a hushed voice. Lars staggered a bit when he reached the doorway of the kitchen. He licked his lips and cracked a little smile at her.  
“Ah—oh—ooh—I'm sleepy.”  
“Come on, chubby boy—”  
She put her arm around him and guided him to the door on the other side of the hall. She yanked open the door to reveal a low hanging dark metal bar, so low that both she and him brushed the crowns of their heads on the bottom: three white plastic coat hangers hung empty right up against the wall. Once Lars had closed the door behind them, and the closet shrouded in darkness save for the light filtering through the cracks in the door, he peeled off his shirt and slung it over the bar above their heads. She took off her blouse and let it fall onto the floor beneath their feet. He then shook his hips to the sides to let his jeans fall down to his ankles. In the dim light, she noticed the little extra flesh on his waist poking out a bit more over the waist band of his underwear.  
“Oh, my, that is a full tummy right there,” she remarked.  
“The hell it is.”  
She put her arms around his waist to hold him: his belly was soft and radiated with warmth.  
“So much love inside of here—”  
He pressed his chest closer to hers and breathed out through his parted lips: his breath smelled of potatoes and gravy. Her fingers wandered onto the soft, delicate flesh over his hips. She pressed her lips to his mouth, a deep kiss which she held onto for a full minute and tasted the Swedish meatballs on his lips. He started to breathe harder when she gave him another deep, long kiss on the mouth.  
“Make love, will travel,” he croaked out at one point. She kissed him again, and again, and again. She felt his fingers caress her bare belly, the same light feathery way she always caressed him and gave him a sweet touch there; his hands glided around her full hips and onto her butt so as to hold onto the lining of the leg holes and tug down. She kept her fingers on the flesh over his hips and his body pressed against her: his belly, while still rather toned, felt like a soft pillow right in front of her. The softest and sexiest of pillows.  
“God, you're so warm,” she breathed out, the outside of her lips just brushing against his mouth: she could taste the gravy there. “I want to get inside of you—” He tugged down on her panties and then his fingers ran along the full curve that was her hip.  
“Feel me from the inside, why don't you, darling—”  
The doorknob jiggled right next to Lars' hip; it was then followed by a soft knock on the door. They both stood there in the closet in stunned silence as the knob jiggled again.  
“The hell? Why's the door locked?” a man's voice on the other side grumbled. In the dim light, Mia noticed Lars peeking over his shoulder at the doorknob.  
“Do not make a sound,” he spoke in a whisper so light he may as well have breathed it.  
“The door's locked?” she asked in an equally light whisper. He gestured to the doorknob and the button in the center pressed down all the way.  
“Trent? There's another closet up here, buddy,” Jason's voice floated from down the hall. There was silence and then Lars and Mia returned to each other.  
“When did Trent and Mike get here?” she wondered aloud.  
“No idea. But—” He stroked the curvature of her back up to the hooks on her bra. “—where were we—”  
She grinned at him and brought him closer to her body again.  
His hands pressed against her belly and he rubbed her soft smooth skin. The very feel of his hands on her was enough to soothe the full feeling inside of her. She showed him a relaxed smile as he petted the roll of fat around her waist. She pictured herself getting heavier with him. She could see it happening between them both: when her body grew a few pounds, he followed right behind her. He poked the love handle next to her belly button and then stroked her again for a moment before speaking up again, still in that hushed voice.  
“Darling—”  
“Yes?”  
“I don't know if it's the dim light in here that's fooling my eyesight, but what are those scratches on your arms?”  
She peered down at her upper arms and the deep scratches Wayne had given her the other day. She was surprised he hadn't seen them earlier.  
“Dry skin?” was all she could tell him.  
“Dry skin, my God, that's focking brutal. At some point this weekend, how about you and I share the bathtub upstairs?”  
“Ooh, in nice oils and soaps.”  
“Exactly! I want you feeling soft for me.”  
“And I want you to all feel soft for me, too, papacito.” She kissed him on the lips and smiled at him in the dim light.  
“Mmm, you taste like meatballs.”  
“Good,” he teased. She giggled as she caressed his neck and shoulders.  
“Let me—Let me kiss every inch of you.”  
“Every inch?”  
“Every inch.”  
She tilted her head to the side and kissed the side of his neck, followed by the curve between the base of his neck and his shoulder. Next was his collar bone and then the toned muscles on his upper arm and then the soft, delicate skin on the inside of his forearm. Then his wrist. The palm of his hand. The tips of each of his fingers, starting from the thumb. She moved back to his neck and shoulders again, and did the exact same on his left side.  
When she reached his wrist, he pressed himself against the wall opposite from the door. She pressed her lips to his chest and then both of his nipples. He hung his tongue out from his mouth as she moved further down his body.  
“Every inch—every inch of your sexy—sensual body—” she whispered in between kisses. A soft, gentle groan emerged from the inside of his throat with each and every feel of her lips on the fine dark hair and the silky skin on his belly. When she reached the trail of hair running down from the middle of his chest to his belly button, he closed his mouth and tilted his head back against the wall.  
Every touch and feel of her lips upon his skin, every inch of skin, all of it, was an inch closer to a climax for the both of them. Every kiss for him coaxed out a groan from the inside of his throat. Every kiss for her was a tickle in between her legs.  
When she reached to the skin right beneath his belly button, his lips parted and a soft moan left his mouth.  
“Jeg vil være sammen med dig for evigt,” he blurted out.  
“Press one for Danish,” she grinned, sticking the tip of her tongue into his belly button. She was about to move right under his belt and blow him when Mikayla's voice emerged from the hall outside of the door.  
“Lars? Mia? Where are you?”  
“Oh, dammit,” he scoffed, bowing his head forward and making his hair slide over his shoulder.  
“We're in here!” called Mia.  
“What are you two doing in there?” she demanded, her voice becoming louder and clearer as she neared the door.  
“They're making whoopie pies in there, Mike,” Ashley cracked from down the hall.  
“That actually sounds pretty good,” confessed Lars in a broken voice.  
“Give us a minute, please,” begged Mia, climbing to her feet and reaching for her blouse slung over the bar.  
“Take as much time as you need, babe,” said Mikayla. Mia slid her panties back up over her hips once she put her top back on over her body. Lars stood still with his back against the wall.  
“Okay, but those belly kisses you were giving me were just—just—”  
“Cute?” she finished for him.  
“—hot. Let's do it again.”  
“Sooner rather than later?” she asked, pulling her jeans back on over her legs.  
“Of course, skat.” He flashed her a wink and then he reached up for his shirt on the bar over their heads. They weren't able to make love again that evening, but they did spoon in bed once everyone turned in for the night. But it was that next day, Thanksgiving day, when Lars and Mia would have the chance once again, one way or the other.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need a rough neck brother that can satisfy me,  
> just for me. If you are that kind of man,  
> ‘cause I’m that kind of girl,  
> I’ve got a freaky secret everybody’s saying,  
> 'cause we don’t give a damn about a thing.  
> -“Freak Like Me”, Adina Howard

Mia rolled over onto her side with a shiver down her spine. There was cold feeling on the soles of her feet and that was what had awoken her. She could feel the quilt, the plush blanket, and the bedsheet on the bed had slid part of the way off of her body, including her legs beneath the knee. She opened her eyes and peered through the darkness to find the edge of the blankets.  
Her fingers brushed against warm, smooth skin followed by wavy, fuzzy strands of hair, and then back onto skin. She made out the outline of the side of Lars’ face, from the round bit of flesh underneath his full chin and his little cherry lips to his button nose and his prominent brow, and then his body laying flat on the mattress. She must have rolled onto her back at some point next to him and then the blankets made their way off of her. Even in the darkness, she could see the soft expression upon his face and the way his throat kept its delicate shape with every deep heave of his chest.  
He never stirred when she touched him.  
She inched closer to him to warm herself up again using his lovely body and the soft blankets. Using her left arm, she tugged down on the edge of the blankets and snuggled down next to his left shoulder. Once she lay her hips on the edges of the covers, she ran the tips of her fingers down his chest put her arm around him.  
Oh, his thick waist, she thought upon feeling him and the extra flesh there. Still slim but he was indeed getting fuller there around his belly button and over his hips, just enough to where he felt so soft and warm. He still felt very full from dinner, too. So exquisite. So tender.  
Mia nestled her chin atop his shoulder and tried to go back to sleep, but all she could think of was the softness of his waist and his whole belly. It was like holding plush crushed velvet, or the finest slice of beef at a meat counter. Yes, that was the one: a nice thick cut of steak with almost the right amount of fat for a nice full flavor. She pictured his body getting heavier and his face getting rounder from all the food that weekend and beyond.  
She opened her eyes again, and sighed through her nose, and nestled even closer to him while keeping her arm around his belly and her fingers holding onto his hip. She thought about the dinner party that next day. So many people were going to be there in that cabin for that evening. So many eyes watching the two of them. But then she thought back to when she and Lars talked over the phone upon her arriving home from Seattle the first time. She remembered everything she had told him, and wondered if anyone was willing to watch them there on the floor of the dining room, or the living room for that matter. She knew for a fact Marcia and Ashley would be willing to watch them, but she was unsure of the others. She hadn’t even seen Trent yet, but rather heard his voice.  
Mia kept her lips near the base of Lars’ neck, that vulnerable spot there between his neck and the top of his shoulder. Just being asleep allowed her to linger there. Just being asleep allowed him to be even softer for her, softer and more tender.  
“When you wake up,” she spoke in a light airy voice, “I want you to hold me and love me. Hold me and love me, beautiful boy. Papacito. Chico hermoso.”  
He groaned inside of his throat as if he was about to wake, but he still never stirred. Mia closed her eyes again and took him in some more. The skin on his neck smelled of soap while his hair right under her face contained that light spicy aroma of the Swedish meatballs. She slid her hand down from his side further down his hip and the smooth fabric making up his underwear. The palm of her hand careened over his crotch. He cleared his throat, lightly sniffled, and shuffled the back of his head about the top of the pillow.  
She returned the palm of her hand to the lower side of his warm belly and the line of hair running down from his navel.  
“Make love, will travel,” she repeated his words from earlier, in that same light airy voice. “Hacer el amor, viajar. Make—the sweetest of love—”  
The tip of her tongue escaped from between her teeth and through her lips. He swallowed, cleared his throat once more, and let out a quiet groan from the inside of his throat, but he never woke up.  
She also thought of taking a bath with him at some point tomorrow, too. All of those dainty soapy suds, the feel of the warm water, and the herbal aroma of lavender oil all around them and cradling them.  
If only she spoke Danish. She could figure out what he had said to her earlier in the closet.  
And if only he spoke Spanish, and then he could do the same for her. But they also spoke the same language through the stomach.  
Those were her last thoughts before she fell back asleep, right there right next to him.  
She awoke again, this time to the tip of Lars' button nose hanging over her temple and the side of his face pressed against her forehead. Daylight washed over his head and his face so she could see his gently closed eyes.  
The tip of his tongue slipped out from between his lips. A groan escaped from his throat.  
She held something soft and plush in her left hand. She pulsated her fingers to make sure it was the flesh over his hip and not the combination of the blankets: he groaned inside of his throat again and then opened his mouth.  
“Is that you I'm squeezing?” she asked him in a small voice.  
“I don't know,” he croaked out without opening his eyes. “Are your fingers holding onto a little handle made entirely of love?”  
“I think so.”  
“Then, yes—that is me. That is my sushi roll you are squeezing. How did—How did you get so close to me?”  
“My feet got so cold.”  
“Aw. You should have woken me up, darling. I would have given you all the blankets. I think I got cold, too, given how close we are right now—”  
“Your little tummy kept me warm, though. Oh, I'm just thinking of all of those kisses I gave you last night, too. If I could use your belly as a pillow, I would.”  
He opened his eyes right then, but never moved his head to look at her in the eye.  
“You wanna use me as a pillow,” he reiterated.  
“Yes.”  
The tip of his tongue slithered over his lips to make them even more pink than before. He parted his lips to show her his front teeth, all of them shiny, pearly, and prominent; he ran the very tip of his tongue along the edges and hung there for a second before he finally lifted his head off of her and rolled onto his back.  
Mia dipped down from his shoulder and under the covers. She slid down the side of his body to the lower part of his warm belly: she noticed his genitals had swelled a bit upon waking up, but she pressed her lips to the flesh next to his belly button and he groaned again.  
“Oh—Oh, yes—that's the spot right there—”  
She kissed him again.  
“Mmm, yes.”  
Once more, a gentle pat of the lips on his skin.  
“Oh, yeah—that's—that's it—that is it—right there—”  
She had the blankets over her head and his body right beneath her. She lay her ear right over his belly button. So soft and yet still a tiny bit firm from the toned muscles in there.  
“—oof—yes—mmm—I could so get used to this—”  
She could hear the slow beating of his heart, the steady rhythms of his lungs, and the quiet rumblings of his stomach and his intestines. Wayne never let her lay on him like this, even when their marriage was still placid. She grimaced at the thought of Wayne: she had lost all nuggets of attraction to him at that point. She wanted Lars for herself. She wanted to make food for Lars and the boys, and she was unafraid of growing heavier with him.  
Mia kept her hand on his hip. He never moved his body, but every once in a while, he raised his hand to scratch his nose and to rub his chin, but he never moved.  
A low guttoral growl emerged from his stomach, right under Mia's ear.  
“Oh, ooh, I felt that,” she remarked.  
“Oh my God, I need something to eat,” he confessed, his voice breaking from sleep. “—oh, Lord, I feel sick. Like, carsick.” She reached up with her left hand to massage the higher part of his belly before giving him another kiss next to his belly button.  
“Would you like me to feed you breakfast in bed, baby?”  
“Breakfast in bed, I'm not sure. But feeding me, I am definitely down for.”  
She gave him a third little kiss followed by a light rub from the tips of her fingers. She then slid her hand to the other side of his hip and pushed herself off of him; she loomed over the middle part of his body in a push up position, still with the covers over her back. He gazed up at her with a befuddled look upon his face and his arms spread under the bottom of the pillow.  
“You look like you're about to ride—ride—ride the lightning,” he confessed.  
She reached up with her index finger to touch the tip of his nose, and then loomed closer to his face.  
“Not yet, I won't,” she vowed. He licked his lips and shifted his weight beneath her. She clambered over his legs, and over the edge of the bed. She rested the soles of her feet onto the floor and shivers shot up her shins and all over her body: she felt her nipples hardening underneath her teddy at the feel of the cold.  
A knock on the door caught both of their attention.  
“Lars? Mia? Are you in here?” an unfamiliar man's voice rang through the panel of the door.  
“Yes, er—” Mia paused.  
“Give us a minute!” Lars called out for her. She scrambled to her feet and dove down for the clothes in her overnight bag; he rolled out of bed and hurried towards the chair for his pants and a clean shirt.  
She decided to keep her teddy on but she put on her jeans and a light gray sweater over her bare arms. She peered over at Lars tugging a white Motorhead shirt with a black spade over his chest and down his torso, and then running a hand through his hair. Mia did the same with her hair and joined him at the door. He opened it first and they were face to face with a man who had his shoulder leaned against the side of the door's threshold and his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets. He had a narrow oval shaped face and penetrating, deep set dark eyes under a mane of long, straight jet black hair past his shoulders. He was wrapped in a heavy wool sweater and wore black jeans, the legs of which hid the top of his heavy black leather boots; Mia spotted a silvery buckle poking out from either side, but she noticed a crease from the tops of the boots right under each of his knees.  
“Good morning,” he greeted them in a suave, quiet voice.  
“'Morning,” Mia returned the favor. “You must be—Trent?”  
“That is indeed me. My first name is actually Michael, but I go by my middle name Trent. Mikayla told me to wake you both if you weren't already because breakfast is done and made.”  
“Ooh, what are we having?” asked Lars, clearing his throat and tossing his hair back from his face.  
“Biscuits and gravy. We're gonna be having lots of gravy on this day.” A small smile crept over his narrow face.  
“Not that there's anything wrong with that,” Mia pointed out; Lars flashed her a light wink before the three of them stepped out of the room and into the hallway. Trent never took his hands out of his pockets as they padded down the stairs to the kitchen.  
“So where are you from?” asked Mia.  
“Me?” answered Trent. “I was born in Pennsylvania but I grew up in Ohio. I met Mikayla at the last strip joint she worked at after she and her pimp of a husband split, and we've been together since then. I'm thinking of starting my own band at some point in the future.”  
“Well, if you need a trommer, you can hit me up,” Lars joked. The three of them laughed at that; they reached the kitchen, where Olivia stirred a saucepan chock full of soft brown gravy with bits of sausage and minute grains of black pepper mixed inside. Jason, Kirk, and another boy were seated at the bar: he had a short mop of dark hair, not quite as black as Trent's hair but still rather dark, a squarish face with a cute dimple in his chin, a narrow Irish nose, and bright green eyes that could knock Mia onto her knees. He, too, wore a heavy dark sweater, but it hung off of his body whereas Trent's fit him rather well.  
“There they are!” declared Olivia, who gave the saucepan one final stir before switching off the heat and setting the pan on the rear burner. Next to her stood a cookie sheet filled to the brim with golden brown biscuits, all of which looked as though they came straight out of the oven. She gestured to the boy at the end of the bar. “This is Ben Shepherd.”  
“The infamous Ben Shepherd,” corrected Kirk; Jason chuckled at that.  
“Very infamous indeed,” he agreed in a low, gruff voice; he ran his fingers over his brow to brush the edges of his hair out from his eyes.  
“It is ready,” said Olivia as she reached for some plates out of the cupboard next to her head. James burst into the room behind Mia, Lars, and Trent.  
“Quick! Quick! Before Ben and Lars take it all but a few biscuits!” he cracked and the room erupted in laughter; when Ben smiled, his cheek bones poked out like little apples, just like Lars.  
Mia licked her bottom lip at the sight of him standing to his feet, his arms and legs long and lanky like the limbs on a marionette. He was like Lars but much taller and with far less hair.  
She turned to the man himself, who was eager to slice two of those biscuits in half with a butter knife, and lay them both, fluffy sides up, and drizzle a generous pool of fresh gravy over them.  
No, she thought as she took a plate for herself. Oh, no. I already have myself set on him. I can't do this to myself, or to him for that matter, especially since I am still married to my husband back home.  
She nestled behind Lars as he showed the plate in his hand a big hearty smile and took in a whiff of the gravy.  
“Oh, yes,” he said under his breath before stepping away from the stove.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You've got a real type of thing goin' down, gettin' down,  
> there's a whole lotta rhythm goin' 'round."  
> -Parliament, "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)"

During breakfast, Ben had told the nine of them that the men of Soundgarden would be showing up some time before dinner that evening with a bottle of red wine and chocolate bobka from the bakery near Pike Place Market. Since he and Lars sat on either side of her, Mia kept an eye on both boys. Every so often, she glanced up at Ben. He had such lanky arms, such that a few of his veins poked up from beneath his skin. His spidery fingers held onto his fork and the edge of his plate: those fingers would be perfect for fingering her.  
But then she turned to Lars and his chubby face and his extra flesh on his body. She remembered she was there with him, and Ben just so happened to show up that morning. But Ben, the one on her right, had a depth to him. The way he looked at her. The way he held onto his utensils. She couldn't help but lean towards him a bit.  
After breakfast was cleaned up, and once Olivia, Ashley, Kirk, Jason, Trent, and Mikayla all joined up to prepare the big dinner for that night, Dave had arrived at the front door of the cabin: he came wrapped in a heavy leather jacket and with heavy black Doc Martens on his feet. His fiery red hair drifted back from his head in wet tendrils.  
“Hey, Trent,” he said as he hung up his jacket and removed his boots. Mia walked back upstairs before she heard anything else and disappeared into the bedroom to see if Lars was in there, given he had left for the bathroom twice during breakfast. He had lay back down on the bed with his arms spread out and his shirt pulled up to his nipples. He rolled his head over the pillow to see her standing in the doorway.  
“Hello, darling,” he greeted her.  
“Hi—what'cha doing?” She grinned at him as she entered the room. She neared the table for her purse; she peeked inside to find her diaphragm leaning next to her wallet, and she slipped it into her jeans pocket.  
“Oh, just—relaxing my stomach for a bit. You know. I made room inside here and had about four more biscuits with gravy. I can't stop thinking about those knee high boots Trent has, either.”  
“Would you like to see me in those boots?” she suggested, whirling around to face him. He rolled his head over to look at her with a twinkle in his eye.  
“Maybe if they were about four inches high, yes please. Are you still wearing your teddy?”  
She tugged on the sides of her sweater to show him. “Yes, I am. I might want to visit that little shop again when we leave Seattle.”  
“For boots?”  
“For boots, baby.”  
Mia neared the edge of the bed with Ben still fresh inside her mind. His eyes had engraved themselves into her memory; she used the tips of her fingers to stroke Lars' exposed belly. He gasped at the feel of her fingers. She parted her lips enough to show him her tongue running over the edges of her front teeth. A smirk crossed his face and he rolled over onto his side.  
“What are you doing?” she asked with a confused grin.  
“Spank me.”  
“With your pants on?”  
“Of course. Do it. As your master, I command you to dominate me and spank me.”  
“But I am not wearing any boots.”  
“Do it anyways, darling. Spank me. Spank me for being such a greedy little pig at breakfast this morning.”  
Mia ran her tongue all around the circumference of her mouth before she climbed onto the bed and straddled his lower legs. She opened her hand and slapped hard on his butt with a loud thwack! from the snug denim over his skin. He screeched out in response.  
She did it again and he gritted his teeth. A third time and a low moan escaped his mouth. She spanked him again, and again, and again, until her palm started aching. She jerked her hand back as if she had been burnt. He peered up at her with a baffled look upon his face.  
“What's the matter? You need a leather glove or something?”  
“Oh, that's it—”  
She dove down with her fingers extended to tickle his belly. He yelped out again, a shrill piercing yelp that echoed over the walls of the room. He rolled over onto his chest and tried to scramble off of the bed to escape her but she climbed on top of his butt and started tickling his sides. He buried his face into the covers and cackled from the squirming, worming sensations of her fingers. Neither of them realized the door was open until Marcia knocked on the door which caught both of them offguard.  
Mia jerked back from him while Lars lifted his head with his mouth agape.  
“Oh my God!” declared Marcia, blushing and clasping her hands to her mouth.  
“What the—Marcia! When did you get here?” sputtered Mia.  
“Just a minute ago! Sonia's downstairs, too—we brought lunch and desserts courtesy of Sandra for the two of you, the boys, Mom, Ash, and Liv, but we didn't know Dave and Ben were going to—be here.” Her voice trailed off when she saw Lars laying like a sphinx on top of the bed and Mia still straddled over his hips.  
“I was… tickling him,” she explained.  
“I can tell.” Marcia could hardly keep the grin from crawling over her face. She started to laugh as she headed out of the room and back out to the hallway.  
Lars let out a low sigh before bowing his head. Mia gently patted his sides and the cute little rolls over his hips. He said something but his voice was muffled by the shape of his head and the mattress under his face.  
“What'd you say?” she asked him. He lifted his head and smacked his lips.  
“Besides, I gotta wash off my crotch before I do anything else,” he repeated. She leaned over his back and held onto his shoulders so as to kiss the side of his neck.  
“I see. Take your time, papacito.”  
She lifted herself off of him and climbed off the bed. She put her sweater back on over her teddy before heading out to the hallway, where she was greeted by the fresh smell of hoagies and—  
“My donuts!” she said in a hushed voice.  
She hurried downstairs to see if it was true. She entered the kitchen from the front foyer and rounded the refrigerator. There, upon the counter adjacent to the sink away from the stove and all the preparations going into dinner, a full baker's dozen of her Puerto Rican donuts neatly lain upon a silvery cookie sheet. She slipped behind the three member tag team of Olivia, Mikayla, and Trent for a pair of those donuts, with their chocolatey dough and shiny red frosting over the tops, and the two wrapped foot long sandwiches with her and Lars' names scribbled on the outside paper from the counter top, and darted into the massive living room to the large luxurious couch.  
She waited a minute before she heard Lars padding down the stairs and entering the kitchen.  
“Where is everyone?” she heard him ask the three of them.  
“We told Kirk, Jason, and Ashley that we've got everything under control in here,” explained Trent, “so they, James, Dave, and Ben are all down in the game room downstairs playing Dungeons and Dragons. I think little miss Mia was in here at one point, though—”  
She craned her neck to peer into the kitchen. She waved at Lars to grab his attention. He spotted her and darted out of the room to meet up with her. He rounded the arm of the couch and took a seat next to her, with a sweet little smile and his cheek bones nice and round. She showed him the donuts resting upon their hoagies which she had resting upon her thighs; that little twinkle in his eye returned to form.  
She picked up the one on the right and held it before his face. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth for a bite. A warm blush crossed his face as he closed his mouth and started chewing up the bite. A gentle groan escaped from his throat as he took in the chocolate, the spice, and of course, the sharp bite of tequila embedded within. She picked up her donut for him to feed it to her, and she took a bite.  
Like a round of slow love making followed by a bit of penetration.  
“Oh my, we're feeding each other in here!” declared Mikayla from behind the couch. They both froze: Lars still with his mouth full and Mia hovering over her donut.  
“Don't mind us, you two,” insisted Olivia. “We're just calling trying to get Ashley back up here. We need her hands to help make rolls.  
They remained still right there on the couch.  
“They're not gonna fucking do it now, Liv,” Trent scoffed. “Probably 'cause we're in the room.” He and Mikayla returned to the kitchen while Olivia disappeared behind the entrance of the foyer for the stairwell leading downstairs. Lars and Mia returned to each other; he swallowed his bite when she took another one for herself. She chewed it up and then swallowed as he gazed into her eyes.  
She recalled what she had said to him that time over the phone: having sex right in front of everyone in the cabin.  
He took another bite of donut, still keeping his eyes locked upon hers.  
She licked her lips before taking another bite herself. His green irises penetrated her and dug deep inside of her to the furthest corners of her mind. She imagined her clothes coming off of her body as he kept eating his donut, and she kept eating hers. At the same time, she pictured him stripping every piece of clothing off of his body. They stayed silent with their eyes locked upon each other until they sank their teeth into their hoagies.  
The warm wheat bread, toasted to a light crispy golden brown. The creamy mayonnaise. The crisp lettuce and spinach. The crunchy cucumber underneath the soft sliced chicken and melted provolone cheese.  
She was going to eat every last bite of that footlong.  
Mia glanced over at Lars' Black Forest ham hoagie and flashed him a smirk.  
“Oh, if only that sandwich was a meatball one,” she noted.  
“Or Puerto Rican chorizo,” he replied with a wink. They ate in silence until at one point he leaned back against the couch with the empty wrapper strewn over his lap.  
“Want me to unbutton?” she asked him as she held the final bite of hoagie in her hand.  
“Behage,” he grunted out, licking his lips and clearing his throat before giving her a low internal groan. She unfastened the button on his jeans under the hem of his shirt. He parted his lips as the lower part of his belly poked out over the hem of his jeans.  
“I keep thinking about what I told you over the phone that one time,” she confessed in a quiet voice. He raised his eyebrows at her.  
“And?”  
“I don't know.”  
“What do you mean? Of course you know. You want me to fuck me.”  
“Not right now, no.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I've got my sandwich and there are more people coming.” She slipped that final bite into her mouth and then wiped her hands together.  
“You know what else is coming, right?”  
She flashed him a devious glance.  
“Let me guess,” she said with her mouth full. He bowed his head, and the tip of his tongue slithered out of his mouth.  
“Come on—you can't resist me.”  
She swallowed. “Maybe I can.”  
“Come on—”  
She glanced down at her right hand which rested upon the edge of the couch cushion. She raised her hand to grope his knee and he jerked it back.  
“My belly's up here. By the way, you owe me.”  
“I owe you? What do I owe you?”  
“More kisses. Below the belt and all the way down my legs to my toes.”  
“I'll give you your kisses—when I feel like it—”  
“Where the hell is Ashley,” Olivia muttered in the next room over.  
Mia peered back at Lars and his little belly, slightly round underneath the fabric of his shirt. She eyed the full shape of his lower jaw and his parted cherry lips. She wanted to hold him off for a few more minutes to rile him up, but she couldn't help herself. She lunged for his body.  
“Come here—” she whispered, putting her arms around him.  
“Only if you come here,” he retorted, reaching up under her sweater and her teddy. He fell onto his side on the couch cushions. She could only hear his throaty groans and his heavy breathing; she could feel herself growing damp with every kiss: soon, her vagina twitched and throbbed under a wet coating. He held onto the sides of her sweater and peeled it off of her body. She gasped when he slung it over the back of the couch, and then she returned to his mouth, his cheeks, and his neck. Her lips pressed down onto his throat and he returned the favor with a soft moan.  
She gripped onto the belt of his jeans and yanked them down from his waist, down over his thighs; he kicked them off of his legs when she peeled off his underwear. He was about to take off her pants when she remembered her diaphragm in her pocket. She whipped it out before he could have a chance to remove her pants.  
“Oh, yeah,” he breathed out in excitement. He then held onto the waist band of her panties and tugged them off of her hips; she straddled his hips, but he gestured for her to climb off of him. She slid her left foot onto the floor so her legs were spread and set the diaphragm over the lips of her clitoris. Lars clambered off of the couch and rounded her to get her down on the floor, on her hands and knees. He gripped onto her sides and she lashed her tongue out of her mouth.  
He thrust onto her hard, once, twice, four times. She tried hard to keep her cries to herself, but it was useless as Kirk rounded the arm of the couch. He froze right there before her and Lars, who thrust another three times, with his eyes wide.  
But without another word, he hastily undid his jeans and peeled them off, followed by his bright red underwear.  
“Couldn't you—er—have—uf—picked a—oof—more—heterosexual—oh—color—than that—Kirk?” Lars choked out in between the thrusts of his hips. Kirk lay down underneath Mia's face and rested his feet upon the couch cushion so his butt pressed against the front.  
“B—Blow?” she stumbled over the word.  
“If you want, honey,” he gestured over his body, and his dick. He was too far from her, though.  
Thus, without giving it a second thought, Mia lifted her right hand, and reached for the space between his legs, and wrapped her fingers around his shaft; Kirk lay his head on the floor and his wavy hair spread over the carpet. His brown eyes gazed into hers; every so often, he peered back at Lars as he continued to thrust into Mia's pelvic region. She used the pad of her thumb to stroke him until she felt the skin firm up inside of the palm of her hand. He rolled his head to the side just in time to see Marcia, Sonia, and Dave enter the room from the side of the couch; the Bennett sisters both blushed and brought hands to their mouths to stifle their giggles; he pressed his hands to his hips.  
“Well, what have we here?” he chuckled.  
“Marcia—Marcia—Marcia—” Kirk's voice faltered from the touch of Mia's stroking; he gestured for her to join him. Lars, on the other hand, kept at it as he bowed over Mia's back and clasped onto her shoulders. Marcia and Sonia gaped at one another in shock. Kirk continued to gesture at Marcia to join him and then he rolled his head over and stared at Lars in the eye, and stretched out his arm for Lars to take. He reached out for Kirk's hand and kissed the back of it, thus rounding out the threesome. Mia could feel the strands of hair falling upon her shoulder blades; her left arm quivered at the elbow as it was supporting both the two of them.  
“Marcia—” Kirk squeaked out, still staring at the two of them.  
“Kirk—” said Mia, feeling her elbow buckle; she closed her eyes.  
“Oh, shit—!” Lars yelped. She fell onto her side with him still on top of her, both of them panting. He clung onto her hips, and rested his chin on her shoulder, and breathed into her ear. She had let go of Kirk because she didn't feel a thing in her hand; she could feel Lars' tip pressed against the back of her thigh, and the fingers on his right hand creeping up the hourglass shape of her side and over the soft skin on her belly. His touch sent shivers over her skin and the fluttery feeling of butterflies inside her stomach. He brought his hand back to the middle of her belly again for a moment.  
She heard him smack his lips in her ear and then she opened her eyes to the feel of his index finger and thumb pressing onto her right nipple. The feel of the tips of his fingers there was enough to send a little tremor down to her clitoris and her vagina. He pressed his lips to the side of her neck.  
“Fly like a butterfly next?” he whispered into her ear; they glanced up at Marcia, who had stripped off her jeans and squatted over Kirk's genitals.  
“Yeah—oh—” Her voice warped into a light squeak and then a broken gasp as he pinched her extended nipple. He let go of her so she could climb onto the couch cushions. She had to lay at an angle because of Kirk's legs sprawled upon the other end. She lifted her legs into the air and Lars gripped onto her ankles so as to lay them upon his shoulders. In her inverted view, Mia noticed Sonia and Jason joining in with Marcia and Kirk. Jason peeled off Sonia's pants and then gave her a big passionate kiss before she dove down on Kirk on her hands and knees.  
Although she came in upside down, she stuck her tongue into his mouth and he reached up to unhook her bra. Jason fetched the dust bin from the fire place across the room.  
Meanwhile, Dave had backed off and leaned against the wall next to the arm of the couch. It took Mia a few seconds and a thrust from Lars into her ass to realize that, by his closed eyes, head tilted back against the wall, and pleased smile upon his squarish face, he was whacking off to the whole scene before him.  
There was a thump on the floor behind Lars. Mia rolled her head to the side to behold, on the other side of Marcia riding Kirk and Jason spanking Sonia, the sight of James and Ashley laying on the floor and making out with each other. Their mouths were interlocked. He ran his fingers through her red hair while she held onto a part of his blond hair and yanked; he reached down for the bottom hem of her shirt while she slid her hands onto the back of his neck. She straddled his hips and he spread his long legs over the floor. He grunted when she pressed her mouth to the side of his neck, complete with a low moan from her.  
The front door opened and closed. Five seconds in between a pair of thrusts from Lars on Mia's butt. Olivia yelped out.  
“What the hell is going on in here? Ashley!”  
Mia glanced up again at the sight of Trent and Mikayla entering the room on the other arm of the couch in stunned silence. He then turned his head and kissed her on the mouth.  
“Have I told you lately that I am so attracted to you right now?” he told her in a hushed voice.  
“Oh, who am I kidding—” Mikayla lifted her leg and wrapped it around Trent's hip before giving him a deep kiss with her tongue.  
“Ah! The rolls!” Olivia screeched and left the room again.  
Meanwhile, Mia shut her eyes as Lars kept at it while gripping onto her ankles. She took in every thrust, every gyration of the hips from him, every hard throb of his firm tip and shaft upon her butt and her clitoris. Her diaphragm was working overtime that afternoon, and it wasn't even dinner time yet.  
The feeling in her vagina was becoming too much to bear, and all those people in that room only added fuel to the fire raging inside of her. Upon Lars' next thrust, she opened her mouth and let out a loud, orgasmic shriek.  
“Yes! That's it!” he bellowed, his pupils like supermassive black holes.  
“OH GOD! YES! Oh, Lars—harder! Harder, baby! HARDER! OH—YES!”  
James growled like a wild animal on the other side of the room. Mikayla and Trent had fallen to the floor next to him and Ashley. Dave had slid down to the floor. Marcia gasped for breath. And Sonia was about to sit on Kirk's face with a sore butt when the doorbell ringing caught them all off guard.  
“Oh, dammit!” James shouted from across the room as Ashley pushed herself off of him.  
“Alright, everyone zip up,” said Dave from the floor.  
“Pfff, do more than zip up,” Trent scoffed as he and Mikayla climbed to their feet.  
“Surely the men of Soundgarden have—a few—aces up their sleeve?” Lars bowed his head and hovered there underneath Mia's legs, which were still hanging off of his shoulders.  
“Who knows,” Jason admitted, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.  
“That was hot, though,” Mia croaked out. Lars grinned at her.  
“Indeed it was, darling,” he panted, patting her ankles before lifting her legs off of his shoulders. The front door opened and everyone scrambled to fetch their clothes, but Ben greeted Chris, Kim, Hiro, and Matt with excitement.  
“Oh, man, you guys should've seen it!” he exclaimed as Lars, Mia, Marcia, and Kirk slipped their underwear back on. “It was INCREDIBLE!”


	29. Chapter 29

Even though Ben had hinted about the party in the living room, Mikayla rushed over to him to clarify to the four curious men at the door what had happened instead.  
“Hell of a game of Dungeons and Dragons,” she told them, putting an arm around Ben's shoulder. “Anyways, come on in, boys!” She shut the door behind them as they entered the foyer to hang up their coats; Mia saw her whisper something into Ben's ear right behind them and then lift her head to speak to him in a normal voice.  
“So introduce us,” she insisted to him.  
“This is Matt—” He gestured to the boy with a wave of rich golden blond hair over his square head and with a large white box tucked under his arm.  
“—Hiro—” the trim Japanese boy with thin, straight black hair down past his shoulders and snowy white skin right in front of her.  
“—Kim—” the burly brown skinned man with a short black beard coming in on his round chin and enormous brown eyes and holding a large olive green Methuselah of red wine.  
“—and this here in front of us is Chris.” The tall slender boy with a squarish jaw, full sensual lips, a straight nose, and wavy black hair which started to grow down toward his shoulder blades turned to face him and Mikayla with a quaint smile. Matt and Hiro both wore white T-shirts over striped sweat shirts and denim jeans with high waists; Kim had on a gray button down shirt and black trousers, while Chris wore black from his head down to his feet. He pressed his hands to his hips when he noticed all the people in the living room putting on their pants or their shirts: Mia glanced down at Kirk buttoning up his jeans with one hand and buttoning up Marcia's pants with the other.  
“Must have been hell of a round for everybody to be taking their clothes off,” he remarked; he eyed Lars, who ran a hand through his long hair and huffed like a horse.  
“Sweating, too,” Chris continued. Lars glanced at Mia, who noticed he had a warm glow about his face and a slight shine over his cheeks and his chin, but no sweat so to speak.  
“Yeah—er—Mia, why I am sweating so much?” he asked her as he pushed his bangs up and off his forehead. She nibbled on her bottom lip.  
“Probably because—you're hot,” was all she could come up with for him. He shrugged and raised his eyebrows at that.  
“Sounds—reasonable.”  
“Anyways, we brought cake,” Matt picked it up after a toss of his hair with his head.  
“And wine, too,” Kim pointed out.  
“Hey, there are donuts in here!” Hiro declared from the other doorway into the kitchen.  
“Yeah, take a few,” Marcia called out once she stood up, using the arm of the couch as a support, and then turned around to help Kirk to his feet. Right then, Sonia leaned into Jason's face.  
“Was that pan you spanked me with clean?” Mia heard her ask in a low voice.  
“Oh yeah,” he assured her, nodding his head. “If it wasn't, I never would've spanked you.”  
The rest of the afternoon was quite awkward given with Soundgarden there in the cabin, and Kirk, Jason, Dave, James, and Ben having to put on a front for Kim and Hiro, who wanted to participate in the game of Dungeons and Dragons in the game room downstairs. Lars, Mia, Marcia, and Sonia stayed in the kitchen with Olivia, Mikayla, Ashley, Trent, Chris, and Matt as preparations for dinner pressed onward. The four of them congregated at the bar while Chris and Matt took the small table tucked in the corner behind them. The two of them spoke about something in quiet voices so they weren't paying attention to the four at the bar.  
“My ass is on fire,” Sonia whispered into Mia's ear at one point.  
“So is mine,” she whispered back, “and I wasn't spanked by a dust pan.”  
Lars, meanwhile, watched Ashley cover the palms of her hands in shortening and pick out the pieces of unbaked dough, and roll them into tight balls in the palms of her hands, and place them on the large cookie sheet coated with even more shortening on the counter before him. Each of them rolled up and buttered down before soon going into the oven and becoming those dinner rolls, golden brown on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. Olivia grinned at him at one point.  
“Like what you see, Mr. Lars?” she asked him.  
“Give me one of those when they come out of the oven, behage,” he begged in a broken voice. Mia rested her hand on his knee as it hovered next to hers. Without turning his head, he took a glimpse over at her and the left corner of his mouth lifted up just enough to make his cheek bone round out a bit. They stayed there in the kitchen, watching dinner going down before them and all the aromas from the large metal pot of creamy mashed potatoes, the saucepan filled to the brim with creamy beige gravy with flecks of black pepper, to the long green string beans boiling in a separate pot next to a ceramic pot of stuffing, and of course, to the turkey roasting in the oven with a bit of lemon zest and cloves of garlic and rosemary.  
Once all of the food was ready to go, everyone crowded into the foyer and that one table while hauling in extra chairs. Chris and Kim were seated across the table from Lars and Mia, while Trent took the end seat to the left of her. Kim said Jerry was unable to make it to the dinner, but he promised to join up again when the opportunity came about again, and with that, he asked everyone to raise their glasses, be they full of the rich red wine or water, and make a toast to Jerry and the hope that his band as well as Soundgarden could make waves in the tight woven music scene there in Seattle. Once everyone had made themselves comfortable with the company and all the food, Mia returned her hand to Lars' left knee under the table. At one point, when no one at the table seemed to be paying attention to them, he flashed a sly glance at her and the left corner of his mouth lifted up again. She wanted to give him a little peck on the filled out cheek, but there were so many eyes there that she needn't risk it.  
The chocolate babka Matt had brought along from one of the little European bakeries in Seattle had a gentle twist throughout its full buttery body. Inside were swirls of dark chocolate which was bound to kiss each and every one of them at the table on the inside of the mouth, while the raw but smooth honey drizzled over the top could perhaps set them up for another party in the living room. After everyone's rounds of the main course had been made, Chris took up the offer to slice up the cake. When he inserted the blade of the knife into the top, the dough made a quiet crunch, and that was how Lars and Mia knew it was baked to decadent perfection. He lifted the end slice onto a plate for Kim, and then cut another slice for himself and Hiro before moving onto the rest of the table.  
“It was either babka or some kind of pie,” he explained, handing Mia the plate, “and the four of us voted on mixing it up with the babka instead.” The blade of the knife sank into the top of the cake and sliced all the way through to the white ceramic plate, and he angled the knife in a way to slide the piece of cake on the next plate for Lars. He took the plate with a lick of his lips; he leaned over to Mia once he had it in his hands.  
“This is going to be incredibly hard,” he whispered into her ear: the warm blush returned to his face, and she glanced down to his legs, which were spread wide open.  
“Shhh,” she hissed back at him, reaching under the table to unbutton his jeans for him; Chris sliced pieces of cake for Kirk and James next. He picked up his fork and gently perforated the edge of the slice of babka, and sloughed off a perfect bite sized portion for his mouth. He showed the bite a warm smile with his cheek bones filling out once again and the little bump of flesh underneath his chin only growing fuller. Mia wanted to kiss him under his chin, but she had to remind herself of all the watching eyes around the two of them. It was difficult to undo the button on his jeans as the dark denim had stretched over his legs and his hips, and the slight curve from his lower belly lay over the top hem. But she tried it, lifting up the hem of his shirt with the back of her hand in the process, until she held onto the button well enough to tug it out of its hole.  
“Were you just unbuttoning his pants?” ejaculated Trent with his mouth full.  
Mia and Lars gaped at him in shock; she felt her face grow warm with modesty, while he swallowed, both out of embarrassment and because his mouth was still full with babka. The table fell into stunned silence; Chris knitted his eyebrows together as he sliced pieces of cake for Jason, then Dave and Ben. He was about to make plates for Olivia, Ashley, Mikayla, Marcia, and Sonia next when he cleared his throat.  
“Funny story—” he began.  
“Oh God,” Kim grinned and tossed a bit of hair back from his shoulders with the tips of his fingers.  
“Oh, no, not this again,” Matt joked, burying his face with one hand.  
“Recently—I mean, this was pretty recent, like a month ago—we—myself, Kim, Matt, and Hiro—were in the room right outside of the recording studio. We were playing around with some songs and stuff, you know, we want to create a record at some point. Mind you, we were all sober when we did this. Matt's at his drum kit—we had just brought him in after Sun King left and he was starving to death in Skin Yard, so of course, we had to get him with us. Hiro's about to put his bass over his shoulder, Kim's tuning his guitar, and I'm in the bathroom rinsing out my mouth with white wine vinegar, you know, to get me going for a singing session. I spit it out into the sink and then I take a drink of water and I come back out, and Matt's—playing with himself behind the tom tom drums. I look at him and I go, 'what the fuck are you doing?', and he goes, 'what do you think I'm doing?' Next thing I know, Kim's taking a seat in one of those comfy black chairs before the sound board, and then he starts doing it himself. And then when Hiro starts doing it, I looked down at my jeans and just went 'fuck it.' So I dropped my pants and yelled out 'Farrah Fawcett!' and the four of us are whacking off right there in the studio. We'd say things like 'strippers! Melanie Griffith! Molly Ringwald!' and it would get us going.”  
“Then you started singing,” Kim added after taking a sip of wine.  
“Yeah, I start chanting 'Jesus is my friend! Jesus is my friend!' because, you know, I was reaching a climax point. And at some point, it morphed into 'Jesus, I can't feel my penis.' And then Matt shouts out 'Judas! Mary Magdelene! We've reached Stone Henge!' and the four of us were like 'ah!' and that just kind of killed the mood. You killed the mood, Matt.”  
Lars peered over at James and Kirk with that blush over his face reddening even more; Ben clasped his hands over his mouth to stifle his laughter, while Olivia rubbed her eyes and Mikayla ran a hand through her hair.  
“—what,” Trent stammered out in a flat tone of voice.  
“Yeah,” said Chris.  
Sonia cleared her throat.  
“You know—Chris—it's funny you talk about that.”  
“Why is that?” he asked her. Mia watched her peer over at her and Lars, and at Trent, and then followed by the rest of the table.  
“Because—we all had an orgy earlier. In the living room.”  
Olivia groaned and buried her face in her hands. Lars nearly gagged on his bite of babka and then took a sip of wine before resuming eating. Chris, on the other hand, blinked several times, nonplussed.  
“When?”  
“Before you guys showed up,” explained Ben as a devilish smirk crossed his face, “that's why everyone was putting their clothes back on.”  
“Why didn't you tell us before?”  
“I just—” Olivia blurted out, resting her chin on her hand.  
“Just what?”  
“I just didn't know how you would react to that, so I told Ben to stay quiet. Especially since I didn't know my daughter Ashley was with James.”  
“It just—happened, Mom,” Ashley insisted in a hushed voice.  
Chris shrugged as he held onto the other end of the babka to make more slices.  
“Hey, if it brings you closer together, there's nothing wrong with it. You know, we didn't hurt Farrah, Melanie, or Molly with what did. Bonus if it makes you feel good.”  
“What about if your ass hurts from getting spanked?” Marcia asked, eyeing Sonia in the seat next to her.  
“Did you enjoy it?”  
“—yeah,” Sonia answered in a soft voice. Chris shrugged again as he handed a pair of plates to Olivia and Ashley.  
“Nothing wrong with it.”  
Mia couldn't help but feel like he was wrong about that to an extent. She and Wayne had sex back home and it never brought the two of them closer together. If anything, it repulsed her. But he was right about it, for the most part, and she would think about it all the way throughout the rest of the evening.


	30. Chapter 30

After dinner, everyone had turned in for the night and Chris, Kim, Hiro, and Matt all had gone with Ben back to his house as the ferries had stopped for the overnight hours. Mia had never changed out of her teddy the whole day and so she slipped off her sweater and her jeans, and put both back into her overnight bag before picking out her tooth brush and her tooth paste, and taking both into the bathroom for a couple of minutes. As she brushed her teeth, she noticed the trash can in between the sink and the toilet was raised up a bit from the floor. Keeping the tooth brush in her mouth, she peered down to see the base was resting on something, but she wasn't willing to find out about it. Instead she kept brushing her teeth while staring at herself in the mirror.  
She grimaced at the scratches on her shoulders. At least she could keep them out of everyone else's sight. But she knew she would have to tell Lars the truth at some point as she rinsed out her mouth.  
She returned to the room just in time to see Lars tying his red flannel pajama bottoms at the waist before stripping off his Motorhead shirt. He tossed his hair back with a flick of his head and then folded up his shirt.  
“Really think I overdid it a bit,” he confessed, setting the shirt on the table in front of him.  
“It is Thanksgiving, after all. And you sure had a lot of potatoes and gravy. Would you like a little rub?"  
“Ooh, yes please. Standing up this time, though.”  
She approached him with her arm outstretched; he set his hands on top of the back of the chair and leaned back. She used the tips of her fingers to stroke his warm silky skin, right where his chest and his belly met up with each other. She caressed up his breast bone to rake his chest hair and then move onto both of his nipples.  
“How would you feel if I got my nipple pierced?” he asked her.  
“I wouldn't stop playing with it,” she confessed, bringing her hand back down to his belly. She reached his waist when he slipped his left hand under her teddy to return the favor and caress her belly. She chuckled and leaned in closer to his face as if she was about to kiss him.  
“I say we go to bed,” she whispered into his face.  
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, running the tips of his index and middle fingers over the fullest part of her waist and around the rim of her belly button before letting go of her.  
They ambled to either side of the bed and crawled underneath the covers in unison; Mia reached up and switched off the lamp, which in turn engulfed the room in darkness. Lars rolled over onto his left side while she nestled up behind him to spoon him. She held onto his hips and his waist, that soft beautiful thickening flesh. She was about to fall asleep right behind him when he cleared his throat and smacked his lips as if about to say something to her.  
“Darling—” he started, leaning back on his shoulder as if about to roll over onto his back next to her.  
“Yes?” She let go of him and rolled back with him.  
“Can I ask you something?”  
“Yes.”  
He cleared his throat, sighed through his nose, and shifted his weight before remaining there in silence for a minute. Mia rolled all the way onto her back and turned her head over on top of the pillow to see the dim outline of his face against the darkness.  
“Now—just as a disclaimer, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Please, do not take this the wrong way.”  
“Of course.”  
“You know I've been eating a lot—a lot more than I usually do—”  
“Yes.”  
“—and I love the feeling. I love feeling full. You know, it's—a beautiful feeling. A gorgeous feeling. And I love what we do together and also what happens to me because of the full feeling inside of me.”  
“I sense a 'but' coming.”  
“Em, yes. You know I have—put on a little weight, gotten a little bit fuller in my body, and I know you like it and I feel better with it. I don't feel as malnourished or as starved with these little sushi rolls over my hips. But I don't want to—put on too much. I still have to drum, be the backbone, and the maestro behind the kit.”  
“That's true.”  
“But I still want to please you, though. And I still want to feel good for myself, too. So—I suggest we set a limit for myself.”  
“Well, if you are going to set a limit for yourself, I suggest we set a limit for me, too.”  
He nodded his head in the darkness.  
“That is totally fair. But let's pick a number for the both of us, though.”  
“How about… twenty pounds for me.”  
“Twenty? No, no, no, no, no.”  
“What? Why?”  
“Because—Because you're a woman, you hold onto your weight better than I can. You know—it—the pounds—go to your hips, and your thighs, and your chest, not just your gut.”  
“And I suppose the way I'm built, I can hold onto more, too?”  
“Well…”  
“Oh, come on now.” She rolled over onto her side; under the blankets, she slid her hand over his bare belly and down his side to his hip. She squeezed the pocket of soft flesh over his hip; she watched the dim silhouette of his tongue poking out from his mouth.  
“How about—thirty for me,” she suggested, still caressing his hip.  
“Thirty for me, too,” he stated.  
“I want to know how much you weight right now, though.”  
He nibbled on his bottom lip.  
“I don't know—off hand, did you see a scale in the bathroom at all?”  
“I don't think so, no.”  
“Dammit. I think I'm at one hundred thirty odd pounds, or something around that ballpark. Are you sure you didn't see one?”  
“I really don't know.”  
Lars still kept his two front teeth on his bottom lip for a moment. He then pushed the covers off of his body and rolled out of bed. Mia watched his silhouette move through the darkness around the foot of the bed towards the door. She climbed out of bed on her side and followed him out to the hallway; he strode into the bathroom at the end of the hall and clicked on the light. She squinted her eyes at the bright yellow light flooding over the room and into the hall, but she blinked several times. Once her eyes were adjusted she watched Lars crouch down next to the sink, and take a silvery metal scale out of hiding from underneath the trash can, and onto the floor before him. That was it!  
He turned to the side for a moment so Mia could see the gentle, full curve around his waist right over the band of his pajama bottoms.  
He then set his left foot on top of the scale, followed by his right foot. She leaned her shoulder against the side of the doorway and cocked out her hip as she watched him stand there.  
“Yeah, I'm at one thirty-seven, so—seven pounds. Not bad. But—still.”  
She stepped forward right as he stepped off the scale for her to weigh herself. The narrow black needle remained in place as the dial inside whizzed up to the one hundred eighty mark.  
“One eighty.”  
“Wow. We have got a lot to work with here then.”  
“Of course.” She took a quick glimpse back at him with a playful little smirk; his little cherry lips then twisted up into an equal playful smirk and he set his hands on his hips.  
“You just wanna see me all nice and fat, don't you?”  
“Well—”  
“Well what? Come on, Mia, darling. Look at me—I've got a little muffin top coming in here—”  
“I dunno about 'fat'…” She scanned his whole body from his feet all the way up to his head. Her eyes locked on his belly, ever so gently poking out, and his waist, filling out a bit with those seven extra pounds of lovely flesh. “Definitely more to feel. And to love.”  
He raised his eyebrows at her and bowed his head so the tips of his bangs acted as a curtain over his eyes.  
“Definitely—so much more to love.”  
The corners of his mouth slowly crept over his full face and he raised his shoulders a bit.  
“Don't be so coy, baby.” She wagged her finger at him before stepping into the bathroom with him. She opened her arms to hold him around the waist. His skin felt cool from being in the chilly bathroom, but his flesh was plush and velvety to the touch. She stared into his face for a second before giving him a gentle kiss on the lips.  
“Don't—ever—be coy—around me, baby,” she whispered to him before giving him another sweet little kiss on the lips.  
“Besides—you are my baker,” he whispered back.  
“I am your baker,” she echoed, “now let's go back to bed.”  
She let go of him but she led him out of the bathroom back to the bedroom. If there was a love she could deal with more than anything and make it happen, it was with Lars. And she knew they were going to make it happen without Wayne ever knowing, one way or the other. He hardly looked at her, so she knew a few extra pounds on her body would fly under his radar. Mia knew she was going to get serious with this little Danish man, especially once she woke up in the morning.


	31. Chapter 31

“Mia—Mia, darling—you're laying on my arm—”  
She opened her eyes to find herself face to face with Lars, who had, at one point, during the night, rolled over onto his back to which he dangled his left leg out over the edge of the bed, and the tips of his toes brushed upon the cold carpet. Mia had cuddled closer to his body to feel his warmth more but since he had moved from her, she only crawled closer to him during the night; thus, she was laying on his right arm.  
He rolled his head over the surface of the pillow to look at her in the eye with those luminous green irises; since she had pinned down his arm, he pulsated his fingers over the soft flesh on her belly. She giggled at the feeling before she rolled over onto her back to let him get back onto the bed and beneath the covers all the way.  
He pulled his arm out from beneath the blankets and wiggled his fingers before he shook his hand about to get the blood flowing again. Even though it was still quite dark in the bedroom, Mia noticed the first rays of gray sunlight peeking from beneath the bottom hem of the curtain over the window.  
Through her still half asleep brain, she remembered it was Saturday morning. Their last day there at the cabin on Bainbridge Island, and the two of them were to take the first ferry back to the mainland with Olivia, Ashley, James, and Jason. Marcia and Sonia had asked Mikayla the night before, prior to leaving if Kirk could come with them back to Portland for a while, and she granted them their desire. The four of them and Trent had left once Kirk had given a final toss of his hair, and everyone else in the cabin called it a night.  
Once he had shaken his hand around enough, Lars snuggled closer to Mia's body and lay his head against her shoulder. The side of his bangs pressed against her head; he sighed through his nose and was about to go back to sleep when his eyes popped open again.  
“Oh—I keep forgetting to ask you—how has your head been lately?”  
“My head?”  
“Yeah. I noticed the gash on your forehead has cleared up, but you know—”  
“Oh, it healed about a week ago. I stopped feeling dizzy around then, too.”  
“And they still haven't found out what caused the gash there and on the back of your head, either?”  
“No. But—I am healed. And I still vow to not cut myself anymore.”  
“Good—”  
He stretched his neck to kiss her on the lips, a gentle good morning kiss.  
It was at that moment Mia thought about Wayne back home in Portland. She hoped Marcia, Sonia, and Kirk had returned to their house unscathed and without him waiting for them there with rapid fire questions on Mia's whereabouts.  
Lars rolled all the over onto his shoulder to give more to the kiss. He lay the tips of his index, middle, and ring fingers to the side of her face; she closed her eyes as she put her arm around his body to bring him closer to her. Her fingers glided over the little pillow of flesh over his hip, and then onto the side of his butt. She followed the curvature of his cheek before giving him a little squeeze and then a light tap with the tips of her fingers.  
“It's still early, skat,” he whispered into her face.  
“So what,” she replied, giving him another tap. Wayne remained etched within her mind, his fat doughy face turning fiery red with anger and his heaving hulking body lumbering towards her. Lars began to breathe more deeply; he tugged her even closer to him and moved his mouth down to her neck. The edges of his teeth scraped against the skin on the left side of her neck, right at the base atop her collar bone so the side of his head brushed against the pillow. She gasped at that grinding feeling which was then followed up with his lips pursing together to suck on the skin. She squeezed him again and he kept at it, trading between biting and sucking on that minute part of her skin.  
She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the feeling, but Wayne kept appearing inside of her mind. She squeezed him yet again and that time thought about his butt growing softer with those thirty pounds they had decided on for each other. A grin broke out over her face, which just so happened to be when he gave an extra hard bite on her neck.  
Her tongue slithered out of her mouth as she gasped for air. Every bite sent a small tremor down her spine to her clitoris.  
“Oh—”  
He then began another rounding of suckling on the spot, and then let go of her to finish it up with a series of delicate kisses. She licked her lips and then groaned inside of her throat before giving him another light pat.  
“Would you like me to do that to you next?” she asked him in a broken voice.  
He lifted his head to gaze on at her in the dim light.  
“Okay. Where would you like to go on this body that you find so attractive?”  
“How 'bout your belly? I still owe you some, after all.”  
“Eh, you can finish the job whenever you want, darling. But I do enjoy those little kisses down below the chest, though.”  
She brought her hand to his face before giving him a kiss on the lips. Mia then sat upright to shift herself down the mattress to his bare belly, which hung out a little bit from partially laying on his side. She ran the tip of her finger around the rim of his belly button and the sprigs of hair growing around it before he could roll over onto his back. Mia pulled the blankets back over her head and his body to keep the heat inside of there.  
She lay down on her left side right next to his hip and rested her right hand on his thigh so she was face to face with that slight roll of fat, which she saw stretch around his waist. Using the tip of her index finger on her right hand, she poked the softening flesh right over his pelvic bone, which was still detectable under his skin, but she knew he had needed to be fed a bit more. She moved her finger to the roll over his hip but it was too far from his belly.  
She then moved her finger to the flesh next to his belly button, which was thicker and much softer even with the plumes of downy hair laying down on his skin. That was the spot.  
She pressed her lips to that little spot there, his skin as smooth as silk and as creamy as butter.  
Lars sighed through his nose and shifted his weight underneath her as she gave him more kisses.  
And then, careful not to hurt him, she exposed her four front teeth against his skin and opened her mouth just enough to let a tiny bit of skin in between her teeth. She closed her mouth and when she heard a long low whistle come from him, she knew she was doing it right, and she proceeded to nibble on him.  
Little love bites right on his belly.  
She then pursed her lips together to suck on the spot like she would a drink from a straw. She felt him roll his head around on the pillow in front of her and shuffled his left leg right next to her.  
She returned to nibbling again and then started trading between the two, nibble, suck, nibble, suck, nibble, suck, until he started gasping. A soft moan escaped from his mouth once she returned to nibbling.  
“Ah—ohhh—oh Lord—”  
Mia came back to suckling for a few seconds before turning to gentle, loving kisses.  
Those sweet tummy kisses that they both enjoyed. Her soft smooth lips on his thickening flesh.  
Before she finished altogether, she ran the tip of her finger around the rim of his belly button again, and in the dim light, she examined the reddish spot right there on his lower belly. She was about to crawl back up to his face when a quiet rumble emerged from the inside of his stomach.  
She scrambled up to his face with her eyes gleaming.  
“Just imagine me doing that again but when your tummy's nice and full,” she whispered into his face as she suspended herself in a push up position over him.  
“And when I've put on those thirty pounds for you,” he retorted with a smirk. She licked her lips at the sight of his face underneath her. He lowered his eyelids at her and she parted her lips so to let out a soft whisper. She stroked the side of his face and the full flesh upon his cheek bones, and then moved down to the side of his neck. The tips of her fingers glided down his chest and onto his stomach.  
“—oh—” she breathed out, bringing herself closer to his face.  
“Yes,” he whispered to her.  
“—oh you—you sexy, sexy little man—” She lowered herself and brought her lips to his for another light kiss. When she lifted her mouth off of him, she gazed into his eyes.  
“I want to feed you breakfast,” she breathed out, “I am ready to make you and feed you so much breakfast.”  
“Something with blueberries? I noticed Olivia bought muffins yesterday during the whole Black Friday thing and they are down there in the kitchen.”  
“All the blueberries, baby. All of them.”  
“And butter, too—don't you think it's a little bit early, though?”  
“No. No, no, no, no. You're hungry. All the blueberries and lots of butter. And I will feed it to you. You and your beautiful body.” She kissed his lips again before she pushed herself off of him and slipped out from under the covers to her overnight bag. She put on her jeans and her sweater before heading out to the hallway and all the dark gray shadows blanketing the walls and the ceiling. Mia padded down the stairs to the kitchen.  
She clicked on the overhead light once she stepped in through the doorway; she blinked several times before she spotted the bunch of massive, fresh blueberry muffins resting on the counter next to the stove. She rounded the bar and picked up the one closest to the edge of the counter: the top spilled over the edge of the wrapper, and she could feel the dough on the inside was heavy and buttery, perhaps buttery enough for him. The blueberries dotting the muffin top glistened in the kitchen light as she held it in the palm of her hand. Perhaps he would like a second one for himself; she could feel the rumble coming on inside of her stomach as she picked up a second one, and then reached for a third one, one for herself.  
She stretched her fingers around the stumps of Lars' two muffins and used her other hand to turn off the light. She froze in the doorway so her eyes would adjust to the dim light in the cabin before she headed back upstairs. Her heart hammered inside of her chest out of excitement as she ran back up to their bedroom.  
She entered the room to find he had not moved from his spot in the bed. She shut the door and ambled towards the bed.  
“Would you like the light on?” she asked as she came closer to the bed.  
“Yes, please.” He hoisted himself into an upright position against the head board; she reached under the lamp shade to click it on, and yellow light washed over the room. Lars squinted his eyes as he reached behind him to fix and prop up the pillow behind his lower back. He then leaned back against the head board and tossed back his hair; the hem of the blankets wrapped around his torso right beneath his chest. Mia set down her muffin on the nightstand, and then showed him the two she had fetched for him. He showed her a smirk in response.  
She set down one of them on the nightstand so as to start on the first one. She held onto the edge of the wrapper and tugged down to peel it off and expose the stump, and went all the way around. Mia set down the wrapper on the nightstand, and then set her knee on the edge of the bed, and hoisted herself up next to him.  
Lars remained still right there against the head board and his pillow as she crawled on her knees towards him. She used her index finger and her thumb to pick off a large piece off of one side. He knitted his eyebrows at it.  
“No butter?”  
“These have lots of butter on the inside.” She brought the piece to his mouth and slipped it onto his tongue. He closed his mouth and began eating.  
“Oh, yeah, they do.”  
He swallowed and pointed at his mouth. She broke off another piece, this time with a large cluster of blueberries, and dropped it onto his tongue, and he ate it up. She reached the last bite of muffin, a large one, and held it before his mouth. He raised his eyebrows at it.  
“That's a big piece,” he remarked. He glanced up at her and she looked down at the piece.  
“Would you like me to split it in half?” she suggested. He looked at the piece, and then at her. Then back at the piece. At her again. At the piece again. He then opened his mouth and came down on that piece in spite of it being quite a bit larger than the width of his mouth. She let go of it and to get her fingers out of his mouth. His cheeks pooched out with that bite of muffin and he tilted his head back to digest it better.  
“May I get the other one?” she gestured to the nightstand. He raised a finger at her as he tried to chew up that bite; she eyed his throat and the flesh under his jaw filling out from having his mouth stuffed full. She watched him move his lower jaw a bit, and then some more, and a bit more, and then finally he started swallowing a bit of it to relieve the pressure on his mouth. He kept going until he finally opened his mouth and breathed a sigh of pleasure before closing his mouth again and groaning inside of his throat.  
“The other one, behage,” he finally said. “Jeg vil gerne føle mig så blødt for dig.”  
Mia leaned back for the second muffin and did it all over again: peeled off the wrapper and set it on the nightstand behind her, and then broke off fair sized pieces of muffin to slip into his mouth. At one point, when half the stump was left, she peered down at the blankets sliding off of him and his belly rising from underneath the covers. He leaned his head back against the head board with his eyes closed and a warm, blissful smile crossing his face.  
“Feeling full?” she asked him. He nodded his head.  
“But I'm not done yet,” he told her.  
“Oh?”  
“Yes.” He opened his eyes and tilted his head forward right as Mia broke the half of a stump into quarters. She slipped the first one into his mouth and, once he had slowly chewed it up, followed up with the last one. Lars leaned back again and rested his hands on his belly, now round and full of two big fat muffins. She leaned in closer to his face to kiss him on the mouth.  
“Would you be willing to feed me?” she asked him in a soft tone of voice.  
“Mmm, of course, darling. Just—” He bowed his head and brought two fingers to his mouth. “—bring me that one right there.”  
Mia reached behind her for the muffin on the nightstand and handed it to him. He licked his lips and took it using his thumb and middle finger; he peeled off the wrapper with just his index finger and took it off all the way in one fell swoop. She picked up the wrapper and placed it on the nightstand atop the other two, and he did what she did and broke off pieces for her, one by one. The soft smooth dough caressed over her tongue and the inside of her mouth, while the blueberries washed over her teeth and tongue with their juice and their tanginess. It was even better with Lars feeding her those pieces, one by one, all the way to the last bite from the bottom of the stump.  
He leaned forward to kiss her on the lips.  
“I feel so much better now,” he stated.  
“Me, too.”  
A gentle knock on the door caught their attention.  
“Lars? Mia? Are you kids awake?” Olivia called through the door in a quiet voice.  
“Yes, we are,” Mia replied, never taking her eyes off of Lars. She stroked the skin on his belly with the tips of her fingers and then leaned forward to kiss him again.  
“I'm putting on a pot of coffee right now—the ferry's leaving in about an hour and a half so gather up your things right now so we can get a move on. There are muffins in the kitchen, too. Big ones, they'll stick to your ribs.” She stepped away from the door and headed downstairs. Lars then showed her a grim expression upon his face; she lunged closer to him and ran a hand through his hair. They both knew this was all the time they had left there in the cabin.  
“I don't want to leave you,” she whispered.  
“I don't want to let you go, either,” he pleaded back, pursing his lips together. “Well, Kirk is down there in Portland with Marcia and Sonia.”  
“Yeah, but it's not the same. I guess the best we can do is to call each other.”  
“Of course, darling. You have my number.”  
He moved his head forward and lay his lips to her mouth for a good long minute; she took in the softness of his lips and the flavor of the blueberries, which still rested upon the inside of his mouth. She bowed her head as she brought her hand back his belly and that warm full feeling inside of him.  
“You are so soft,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I don't want to let you go.”


	32. Chapter 32

The ferry soon arrived closer towards the mouth of the harbor outside of Seattle, and Lars and Mia stayed huddled next to one another across from James and Ashley, and next to Olivia and Jason, throughout the whole trip across the Puget Sound. He kept his arm around her and the side of his face rested upon her shoulder. A cold breeze welled up from the other side of the boat and he huddled closer to her; she lifted her hand to the opposite side of his face and pressed her lips to his right temple. He lay a hand on the bottom part of his shirt and gave himself a light pat.  
“Are you hungry?” she asked him over the monotonous hum of the ferry's engine and the sloshing from the waters down below the side of the bed. He shook his head and knitted his eyebrows together. It took her a second to realize he was referring to the love bite she gave him that morning.  
“Oh—aw—”  
She lowered her hand down to his left hip; her fingers crept underneath the hems of his leather jacket and his shirt to his soft flesh. She then wrapped her right arm around his waist to better hold him. She gave him a gentle squeeze around the waist to feel him once more.  
The cold winds welled from behind their heads, and the bite he had left for her on the side of her neck started to ache from it. Mia used her right hand to lift the collar of her jacket closer to the bite to alleviate the sting. She then wondered how she could hide it from Wayne once she returned to Portland. Her head started to spin for the first time in over a week, but she was unsure if it came from the slow swaying motion of the ferry on the increasingly choppy waters or from worry. She made a mental note to check her overnight bag for something to put over her neck once she and Ashley got on the road again.  
Mia gave Lars another snug squeeze again, holding onto that soft flesh coming in on his waist. Light groans escaped from her throat as she took in his warmth.  
“Are we cold?” asked Olivia; Mia glanced up at James and Ashley, both of whom had snuggled down against the metal seat across the aisle: he had taken the left side of his coat and attempted to wrap it around her to bring her in closer to him, but it was difficult to do so while sitting down.  
“I'm freezing,” said Jason, folding his arms over his chest and snuggling closer to her.  
“We're almost at the harbor, so we'll all be getting into warm places again,” she assured him as she adjusted the strap on her purse before putting it over her shoulder. Mia squeezed Lars' waist once more, that time a tiny bit harder. He was so warm and soft to the touch that she had the worst time fathoming letting go of him once they reached the land. He groaned into her ear, and for a second, she wanted to hear that sweet little sound of pleasure again before leaving the ferry. That is, until she realized he wasn't groaning because she held onto him.  
“Mia—Mia, darling—I can't breathe—I can't—breathe—”  
She eased her grip on him and he gasped for air. She moved her head towards the side of his neck and gave him a couple of kisses. A smile crossed his face at the feel of her lips, but it went away as quickly as it came from the ferry jolting forward as it slowed down for the harbor. He gripped onto her to steady himself, while James and Ashley hunkered down against the back of seats and Jason's feet slid forward across the floor.  
Soon the bow of the ferry brushed against the pier and the step ladders stretched down to the dock from each of the exits. Once they were in steady position, Mia picked up her overnight bag, and Lars slung his over his shoulder, and they filed off via the starboard side. She stepped onto the solid dock and her head spun even more from the swaying of the ferry. She turned around to see him returning to the steady ground right as the morning sun broke through the blanket of gray clouds and shone over the right side of his head, which in turn gave his brown hair a soft golden halo about the crown of his head. His full cheek bones and his chin softened as the skin on his face turned snowy white and his green eyes turned into light spots right underneath his dark eyebrows: the color on his face came from his lips, now a soft light pink.  
“You look like Jesus,” she remarked.  
“I look like Jesus?”  
“Or a cherub. Yeah, that's it—you're like a little cherub.”  
The sun dipped behind the clouds again and the glow faded from his head, and the colors returned to his face; James and Ashley landed right behind them, followed by Jason and Olivia, and they filed out of the way to let the other passengers off of the ferry. A car horn honking on the other side of the pier caught their attention; Lars and Mia turned to see three black cars waiting over by the curb on the viaduct. He turned to her with a hurt expression upon his face, but then lifted a finger to put her on hold for a minute. He wove around her to embrace Olivia and then Ashley, both of whom gave James and Jason hugs as well. Mia threw her arms around Jason's chest: even though he was cold the whole trip over the Sound, his body cradled her with warmth.  
“You ladies drive safe, okay?” he told her as he let her go to James.  
“Of course,” she answered in a kind tone as she put her arms around his tall, lean body. James then beamed down at her with a nervous smile.  
“I dunno 'bout you, but I had a great time over there on that island.”  
“I did, too—we should so do it again some time.” He gave her one more before letting her go so she could embrace Olivia.  
“'Bye, sweetie,” she said in a hushed voice into her ear as she gave her a light rub on the back “—I'll see you soon.” Mia then turned to Lars, and rested her hands upon his shoulders so as to massage them.  
“I will give you a jingle when I get home,” she vowed; she leaned forward and planted a kiss on his lips. He pulled his head back to lock eyes with her once more.  
“That is, if I get home first,” he retorted, giving her a wink and a small smile. She gave him another kiss, followed by a third, and then they embraced one another to take in each other's warmth one last time. Her fingers wound up on his hips again, but this time she kept them on the outside of his coat.  
“Take care of your sexy little sushi rolls,” she whispered into his ear. “Love them, feed them all the good stuff, and keep them beautiful.”  
“For you, of course, skat,” he whispered back. And with that, he let go of her and began back to the street; Olivia gave Ashley one more hug before they headed off to the cars in the parking lot on the other side of the pier. As they rounded the edge of the separating fence, Mia glanced back at the black cars parked at the curb; she spotted Lars nearing the rear door of the one at the front. Once the door opened, he glimpsed over at her with his eyebrows raised. She could feel the tears coming on at the sight of him; even though they were two hundred feet apart, she could see tears brimming his eyes as well. He brought a hand to his mouth and blew her a kiss. She raised her hand as if she was catching his kiss, and then lay her hand over her chest.  
He dropped both of his hands to his chest, then to his belly, back up to his chest, and then back down to hold himself.  
“'Love in my tummy,'” she mouthed. He nodded and mouthed “so, so much—I'm packed full” before he let go of himself to blow her another kiss and give his belly another pat, and then he climbed into the back seat of the car and closed the door. Mia sniffled as she placed her overnight bag into the trunk of Ashley's car. She wiped away tears as she closed the lid of the trunk and rounded the side to the front seat. She climbed inside and set down her purse on the floor next to her left foot; her head continued to spin but that was the least of her problems. Ashley slid into the driver's seat and shut the door; she was about to buckle herself in when she noticed Mia's tears.  
“Are you okay?”  
“I miss Lars already,” she confessed.  
“Aw. Well—” Ashley cleared her throat and shifted her weight in the seat. “—if it makes you feel any better, I already miss James. I think I'm really falling for him.”  
“How did you guys connect?”  
“Through literature, and books, and Dungeons and Dragons from our little party the other night. We both are firm believers in the powers of the mind and embracing each other for ourselves. I don't think it's as powerful as unifying through the appetite like you and him, but it's—it's indeed there. Every time he holds me and kisses me. It's there—” She paused; Mia glanced over right as she reached out to touch the side of her neck.  
“Is that—?” Ashley could hardly keep the smile from crossing her face.  
“Yes. That's from this morning when we got up.”  
“He gave you a little mark! Jeez, he must've sucked on you pretty hard for it to be that bright and that prominent right there.”  
“He threw in some bites in there.”  
“Bites? Whew, that's rough. Make sure you hide that from Wayne when you get back to the house.”  
“I don't know if I have anything, though, other than maybe my knit caps.”  
“We'll stop for gas in Kelso or Vancouver so you can get one of those out of your bag. Stuff it into the collar of your coat and make it look like you've got a scarf. Hopefully he doesn't notice or ask about it. Hopefully.”  
She inserted the key into the ignition and turned over the engine, and yanked on the parking brake lever before they rolled out of the parking lot. They drove out of West Seattle and onto the freeway in silence; Mia sniffled every so often as she gazed out the window all the way through Sea-Tac, then Tacoma, followed by Olympia and the last glance of the Pugest Sound before turning into Lacey and then nothing but looming dark trees. The tall, narrow forest lining the highway had a lush, dark green canopies, and she thought of finding Lars in the Bay Area and then taking him back there to these trees so they could live in the woods together. She rested her hands in her lap with her palms facing down, and she found herself pulsating her fingers against the inside of her thigh and her knee so as to imitate the sensation of squeezing him. She knew the airline food lacked the same power and soul to leave him feeling full, soft, and most of all, speechless. Every lick of her lips out of thirst resulted in her missing the taste of his lips. Every second away from him was a second of forgetting the warmth of his body. Every moment of noise from the road drowned out the memory of his voice.  
His voice. The primary thing that told her he was aroused.  
She hoped Wayne wasn't home by the time signs pointing to Kelso entered their view. If he wasn't home, she could run to the phone the kitchen and leave a message for Lars if he had not returned home himself at that point. She then remembered they hadn't stopped at that same little shop in Georgetown to search for knee high boots, but she knew it was too late at that point. She thought of shopping around in Portland at some point for any some sort of those boots.  
They kept going through Kelso and motored all the way down to Vancouver, and Ashley took the last exit to fuel up the car for the ride towards the south side of town and back again. Mia climbed out and rounded the car towards the trunk to fetch her overnight bag and the knit caps buried underneath her clothes. She picked out the black one and then closed the lid of the trunk, and rounded the side to head back to the passenger side. She stuffed the cap into the collar of her coat right next to Lars' bite mark on the side of her neck. She had to adjust it a bit to keep it from falling out, but once she had it, she waited in the car for Ashley and watched the rain drops collect on the hood before glancing out the windshield.  
Mount St. Helens loomed off in the distance, a slate gray lopsided cone silhouette up against a curtain of light gray clouds. Mia thought about Wayne, how he could imitate Mount St. Helens and erupt at any given minute and force her bright blue sky into murky darkness. Or worse, he could be like Mount Hood and destroy the very place she called home, the little Danish man she called home.  
She wetted her lips again and they dried out within seconds. But once Ashley climbed back behind the wheel, she handed her a bottle of water. She unscrewed the lid and took a large gulp from it. Such bliss! And even more so the case given she hadn't had a drink of water since they left Bainbridge Island.  
They returned to the road and crossed the bridge over the Columbia River; Mia peered out the window at the shoreline in front of them and its stretching out towards the ocean. She wondered if Lars would be willing to spend a couple of days in Astoria at some point.  
They pressed on towards the south part of town and the little blue and white house with the oak tree in the front yard. Mia spotted her car still parked in the driveway, all by its lonesome.  
“Looks like he's not home?” Ashley wondered aloud as she pulled up to the curb and tugged on the parking brake.  
“I think so. I hope so, anyways.”  
Mia threw her arms around Ashley and they embraced one another there in the front seat.  
“Thank you,” she whispered into her ear, feeling the tears well up again. “Thank you so much.”  
“Anything,” replied Ashley. “Anything for my best friend.”  
Mia let her go, and clicked off her seat belt, and climbed out with the bottle of water in one hand and her purse in the other, into the light, late morning drizzle. She slung her purse over her shoulder and then rounded the side of the car towards the trunk to fetch her overnight bag. Once she had all of her things, she waved at the driver's side window, and Ashley pulled away from the curb to turn around in the street. Mia padded up the walkway to the doorstep then set down her bag for a moment to search around for her house key. She took it out of the side pocket inside her purse and unlocked the door.  
The door swung open and she stooped down to pick up her bag, and then headed inside. A cold chill hung in the front foyer of the house, and she knew for a fact Wayne wasn't home, however she kept a hand on the knit cap tucked into the collar of her coat as she ambled down the dim hallway towards her bedroom. She peeked inside and saw he had stripped the sheets and the blankets off of the mattress and didn't bother to change in fresh ones from the laundry. Mia sighed and set down her overnight bag on the floor and then reached for the cordless phone on the nightstand.  
She punched in Lars' phone number and sat down on the edge of the bare mattress. She heard the dial tone once, twice, four times, and then—  
“Hey, this is Lars, I'm either too drunk or I'm banging away right now so leave a message, behage og tak skal du have.”  
She licked her lips and took off the knit cap to expose the mark on her neck.  
“Hey, papacito,” she greeted in a light whisper and with a small smile upon her face. “It's me—I just got home and I miss every part of you. Please call me when you get a chance. I want to tell you how thirsty I have been lately, longing for your touch and for your voice. I want to come to you again and give you your cake. Kiss kiss, baby.”  
She hung up the phone and pressed a hand to her chest before falling onto her back on the mattress. She could care less where Wayne had run off to; all she wanted was to hear Lars' voice again.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give it up, do as I say,  
> Give it up and let me have my way,  
> I’ll give you love, I’ll hit you like a truck,  
> I’ll give you love, I’ll teach you how to…  
> I’d like to put you in a trance, all over…  
> -Madonna, “Erotica”

Wayne never showed up back home for the rest of the day, which allowed Mia to relax on the love seat in the living room for a bit to ease the spinning motions in her head. She reclined on her back so as to gaze up at the ceiling; and all the while, she thought about him. She considered getting up and putting her shoes and coat back on to go into town in search of those knee high boots, that is until the phone rang again. Eager to hear Lars' voice again, she hurried down the hall and skidded into the kitchen. She lunged for the phone and picked the receiver off the wall. She sighed, cleared her throat, and tried to calm her trembling heart beat as she brought the mouth piece up to her face.  
“Hello?” she greeted in a sweet voice.  
“Hi,” said a man's voice in a casual tone. She knitted her eyebrows together out of confusion.  
“Who's—Who's this?”  
“It's me.”  
She hesitated and nibbled on her bottom lip. She noticed she was caught in between two worlds right then: she knew if she said the other man's name, she would be bombarded with questions. But then again, his voice sounded far too low and he lacked that accent.  
“Wayne?”  
“Yes. I was just thinking about you. Where the hell have you been?”  
“At—my parents' house.”  
“When? I looked there on Thanksgiving night and they hadn't seen you. I went to Marcia and Sonia's house and they weren't home, either. I went to Ashley's house and she wasn't there, either. I tried calling Mikayla and Olivia but I couldn't remember their numbers off hand.”  
“I was just there—smoothing things over and telling them that—things are alright on my end. The six of us were—we were out all weekend.”  
“Well, okay. You could've at least told me or said good bye to us on Thursday night.”  
“Where are you?”  
“At my parents' house.” Silence fell on his end, total silence save for a light whir of air in the background. “You know—when Mom asks me about our relationship, I feel almost intruded upon.”  
“And?”  
“And? She says I've been hitting you and scratching you on purpose.”  
“And?”  
“And? You know it hasn't been on purpose, Mia. And even if it was on purpose, you know it's because I do it all out of love for you. Wondering about you, looking for you, yelling at you, hitting you—it's all because I love you.”  
She swallowed. Hearing him say that to her caused her to squirm. She brought her fingers up to the side of her neck to feel the love bite Lars had left for her that morning, and she shuddered at the thought of Wayne seeing it for himself at any given moment.  
“Anyways, there's no food in the house,” he continued, clearing his throat.  
“There isn't?”  
“No. When you were gone all weekend, I ate everything that was left in the kitchen.”  
“Why? What for?”  
“I was anxious. Afraid. I didn't know what the fuck was going on with you so I stress ate everything in the house. I think I must've gained fifteen pounds in the past four days alone. I feel all bloated and messy now—” She grimaced at the thought, especially since she recalled the agreement she and Lars made with each other on a ceiling of thirty pounds for the two of them.  
“And—what do you want me to do?”  
“Get more food, obviously. Do you have a pen handy?”  
“No, no, I can—I can go grocery shopping. I was thinking of going into town again at some point today.”  
“Alright. And remember: I love you, even when I tease you and hit you.”  
He hung up the phone without another word, and she stood there next to the phone and listened to the dial tone for a moment before hanging up herself. No sooner had she put the receiver back when it rang again. She picked it up again.  
“Hello?” she greeted.  
“Hi.” That accent and that high pitch squeak.  
“Hola, papacito.” She ran the tip of her tongue along the edge of her teeth. She turned around, and leaned her right shoulder against the wall, and cocked her hip out. “I see you got my message.”  
“Indeed I did. The moment I walked in the door, I saw the light blinking on the answering machine and I knew it was you. And—I wanna tell you that I miss you already, too. I miss the smell of your neck and your hair, and I miss the way you squeeze me, in particular. Are you still wearing your red panties?”  
“Indeed I am.” A small grin crossed her face.  
“I dozed off on the plane and dreamed about them. Dreamed about peeling them off of you with nothing but my teeth.”  
“But then I would have bite marks in them.”  
“Not necessarily. I will do it very gently and very slowly. You know—hold onto the waist band with my two front ones and drag them down, and then move onto the other side and do the same there until they're down by your ankles.”  
“And then stick your tongue into me?”  
“Oh, yes, darling. Lick that sweet sugar right off of you.” She heard him smack his lips and clear his throat, which was then followed by a rustling sound. He was laying down on the couch again. “So—er—what are you doing right now? How's life back up in Mialand?”  
“I was just about to go into town and get some food. There is nothing to eat in the kitchen.”  
“Oh, that's a shame. I have never liked a vacated kitchen.”  
“I was also thinking of looking around for those knee high boots you and I were talking about.”  
“Oh?”  
“Yeah. Any particular color?”  
“Black is always a must.” He lowered his voice to a soft croak. She pictured him laying on his back with his tennis shoes kicked off his feet, his jeans unbuttoned, and the bottom of his shirt pulled up to expose the middle of his body; his long hair strewn out in a single curtain next to his head, and his head rested upon a plush couch pillow, and the tip of his tongue lapping out from his mouth every so often. “Black leather, if you can find it. But—surprise me, though. Surprise me as you come striding towards me wearing one of those little teddies I like. Or, er—ooh! Better yet, come in your red lace with a nice delicate little belly chain around your waist. And bring rope, too.”  
“You want to be tied up?”  
“Yeah. Tie me down to a chair and then proceed to feed me my birthday cake.”  
“Oh, I see.” She licked her lips at the sound of that. “Should I get you something?”  
“Me?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Well, my birthday cake, obviously.”  
“Yes, but—something else?”  
He fell silent for a moment.  
“One of your Puerto Rican dishes. Something savory and—filling.”  
“Well, let's see—it'll be Christmas. So, savory? There's arroz con gandules, which is yellow rice with pigeon peas cooked with sofrito oil. It has pieces of pork, lots of spices, bell peppers. and bay leaves.”  
“That sounds amazing.”  
“Oh, it is. Especially on a cold rainy day in San Francisco, or a snowy day up here, it will warm up that sexy little belly of yours. Let's see, what else can I think of… my mother, my father, and my grandmother all have always served pasteles at Christmas time, which is a savory meat pie and it's often stuffed full of meat, spices, olives, sofrito, and garbanzo beans, and then wrapped in banana leaf.”  
“Hmm.”  
“Lechon, or roasted pork for my little piggy—and of course, there's dulce de leche. There are all kinds of dulce—all kinds of sweets from bread pudding to sponge cake to flan—I can bake it for you, and make it go right into your tummy and warm you up so nicely so we can make love under that mistletoe. But dulce de leche, though… sweet gooey, drizzly, milky caramel that I will let you lick off my fingers.”  
“And I can lick it off your whole body for that matter?”  
“If you want.”  
“What was that meat pie you were talking about just a bit ago?”  
“Pasteles?”  
“Yeah.”  
“You want chorizo inside of those, don't you?”  
He smacked his lips.  
“On the drive home from the airport, I went past the butcher in town, and he just so happened to have chorizo on hand. I didn't get any, but—it was—it was right by the stoplight, so when I sat there for a moment, I looked over at the links in the window, and my stomach grumbled the same time I felt my jeans tighten up a bit.”  
“Do you still have pastrami?”  
“I do. In fact—since I mentioned my stomach rumbling—I think I'm going to get some out of the fridge right now and eat it for you. Right here over the phone. Hang tight for a minute, darling—”  
“Of course, baby.”  
There was another rustling noise followed by a soft thud on his end. She licked her lips as she heard a brief silence and then some more rustling, and then a clinking noise, which was then followed by a refrigerator door closing with a soft, distant thud. She heard a distant click, and then more silence, then footsteps padding along, and then finally, a rustling noise once again.  
“You still there, honey pie?” he greeted her again.  
“I never left, baby.”  
“I got some—” He cleared his throat before lowering his voice again back to that soft croak from before. “—some pastrami out of the drawer and I'm just—I'm just—” His voice muffled a bit. She then recognized that guttoral groan on his end. There was another rustling noise.  
“Are you eating it?” she asked.  
“Mm-hmm,” he answered with his mouth full. “I'm just imagining you feeding it to me.”  
“Did you get a lot?”  
She heard him swallow it down.  
“Mmm, oh—just a few slices. I folded up that first one before I put it in my mouth. But they're quite large… and thick.” He almost breathed the word “thick.”  
“Picture me holding it over your mouth,” she began, licking her lips once again, “with one hand. I am looming next to you and unbuttoning your jeans in the process with my free hand. Then I begin rubbing your belly.”  
“And you do it with each of the slices?” She heard him put another slice into his mouth.  
“Each—and every one of them. And then I feed you your chorizo pasteles. And I feed all of them to you, oh so nice and slowly, so you take in every single bite. Like Puerto Rico is kissing you, making love to you, and then fucking you from the inside. I feed you until you are nice and full, but I do not stop there. I give you the dulce de leche on my body and I will force you to lick it off of wherever I put it on my body.”  
She heard him let out a low whistle on the end.  
“And then we make love?” he suggested.  
“Sweet, sweet love. Sweeter than in the cabin. I will make sure your belly is nice and full, and your body is giving itself to me as I tie you up so I can sit in your lap and play with you better. But I will be wearing my boots so I can definitely be your mother for tonight. I should get them.”  
“You should, darling.” She heard him eat another slice of pastrami which he accompanied with a low groan inside his throat. She heard him swallow again. “You should get food for yourself, too. Lots of food. So I can play with you, too.”  
“Play with me, too? What do you think of doing?”  
“Mmm, the same things you think of doing to me, except we're on the comfiest bed you can ever possibly think of: my bed.”  
“Your bed?”  
“Oh, yes. Come with me, skat. Come with me to my bed, come home to Denmark with me. Come to me.”  
“Okay—what dishes do you think of giving to me?”  
“Well, let's see—coincidentally back home, we have something very similar to Swedish meatballs called frikadeller, and they're pan fried and seasoned to perfection. Warm you up so nicely on those frigid, dark Danish nights. And then around Christmas time, we've got a rice pudding of sorts known as risalamande, served with cherry sauce. And that, my dear, is usually part of a little game we like to play.”  
“Oh?”  
“Yeah. The lucky bastard to get a whole almond in the bottom of their bowl gets a little pig made of marzipan.”  
“A little—pig?”  
“A pig.”  
She giggled at that, and she heard him giggling in return.  
“A pig!” she declared.  
“A pig! A fat little pig—like me.”  
“So if I find an almond in my bowl, I get my pig?”  
“Of course.” She pictured him showing her that little grin. “We love our pork, too—flæskesteg with potatoes and gravy and butter? Oh… oh, darling.”  
“Would you be willing to tie me up?”  
“Mmm, if you would like me to do that. I can also handcuff you to my head board and play with you that way.”  
“You are the maestro.”  
“I am indeed the maestro after all. I am the spine and the one leading my band.”  
“Would you still lick the dulce de leche off of me?”  
“Gladly. Sweet caramel on your sweet skin? Or the sweet caramel over your sugar? Absolutely.”  
She heard him put yet another slice of pastrami into his mouth.  
“Anyway—go get more food for yourself, darling. Go find yourself something—something nice and sensuous, something to leave you feeling nice and warm for me.”  
“Of course, papacito rico. Don't spoil your dinner.”  
“As you wish.” She heard him make a little kissing noise with his lips before he hung up. She then hung up her receiver and ran a hand through her dark hair before standing up from the wall and straightening herself out. Her face felt warm to the touch, and she hoped she would maintain that warmth as she trekked back out into the gray rain outside of the house.


	34. Chapter 34

Plantains. Ripe green plantains by the bunches right next to the bananas. But Mia picked bunches from both displays and set them into the hunter green before her. She also picked out ripe peaches, some big red apples, a pineapple, two pomegranates, three lemons, and three nectarines while in the produce section. She passed three stands selling free samples, one with a cheese platter, the next with bruschetta, and the third with pepperoni pizza sliced into small squares the size of fifty cent pieces. Of course she took one from each while she pressed on shopping with a smile upon her face.  
Normally she would drudge about the market with the cart before her, but she was rather cheery at the moment. She thought about Lars the whole time she strode up and down the aisles. She thought of heading next door to the butcher for some chorizo, but on the other hand, she had no idea if it would have to sit in her fridge for some time, that is when she found the opportunity to see Lars again. Christmas was on its way and she hoped to not have to make time in Smell the Magic again to bake his birthday cake.  
She adjusted her knit cap and then sashayed to the first check out line when she spotted Sandra at the end of the line right before her carrying a basket in her hand. Her flyaway black and silver hair cascaded down from the base of her hat onto the shoulders of her bright pink rain coat; her face shone with a big smile as Mia entered her view.  
“Hi, Mia, my sweet! How are you?”  
“I'm fantastic—” She halted right behind her and rubbed her hands together. “Just loading up after a long four day weekend.”  
“I can tell. I came up here from Wilsonville real quick to check up on the bakery and also to get some things. So did Marcia tell you what's going on for us the next month or so?”  
“No, she and I have been on vacation so we both have been totally out of the loop of things.  
“Well, we've got Christmas coming up, and I was wondering if we could bring back your bizcocho de ron for the season, and the macarons, too.”  
“Oh, I love making macarons! And the bizcocho.”  
“We've also the birthday cake lined up for your little Danish friend. What's his name again?”  
“Lars. Lars Ulrich.”  
“Lars, that was it! I knew it was distinctly northern, I just couldn't think of it. And when's his birthday again?”  
“The twenty sixth. The day after.”  
“Let's see, tomorrow's the thirtieth, and Monday's the first, so that's—that's a Friday, so another nice long weekend, too. How old's he gonna be?”  
Mia paused for a moment. She swore Lars ran it by her before, but she had no idea about the age of the boy she was seeing.  
“Twenty… three, I think? Same age as me, but I'll have to ask him.”  
“He asked for chocolate, right?” Sandra stepped forward a bit to the conveyor belt as the couple in front of her checked out; Mia followed and kept her hands on the bar in anticipation.  
“Yes, he did. And for the frosting, he said 'surprise me.'”  
“Ahhh, I see how he is. Since it's a one-off, we can probably bend the rules a bit more with that, too.”  
“So we can do whatever we want?”  
“Sure. I don't see why not. It'll be just for him, so it's not like anyone'll notice it. I also need to tell you that I entered us into a big baking competition that takes place in the spring, in early April, I think? I'll have to check the date. I wrote it down in my pocket book. Once Christmas, Lars' birthday, and New Year's are all said and done, we'll get prepared on that so when you and Marcia go in on Monday morning, or if you see each other tomorrow, start throwing some ideas around. I want to win because the prize is fifty thousand dollars.”  
“Wow! Really?” Mia raised her eyebrows at that as Sandra placed the basket on the black conveyor belt before her and she eagerly nodded her head.  
“Yeah, if we win, you and Marcia get a good, handsome raise. I'll also put the money into expanding Smell the Magic and hiring more people. I worry about you girls sometimes, because it's just the two of you in there.”  
They fell into silence right then as Sandra began checking out and also because Mia started thinking about what they could enter into the competition. She thought back to the conversation over the phone she had had with Lars earlier, and thought of calling him again, that is if Wayne hadn't returned home yet. She also thought of what they could make for Lars' birthday cake, and if he would be willing to have something a little more for his cake, a little more than what they gave Kirk for his birthday.  
Once Sandra had paid for her groceries, she kept the paper bag on the shelf before her to put away her change and then pick out her peacock blue pocket book to check her calendar. Mia inched closer to unload her groceries and glanced up at Sandra every so often as she flipped through the pages and ran her finger over dates in each of the columns. Once she set the bunches of bananas and plantains on the belt and put down the gray divider, Sandra spoke up again.  
“Ah, yes, I reminded myself that the deadline to enter the competition is on March 31, but I already got it—the gig itself is on April 15,” she said in a single breath.  
“The fifteenth?”  
“Yeah. It's on a Wednesday, too, so we'll be closed all week for it, too.”  
“Okay, I'll run it by Marcia when I see her in a couple of days.”  
Sandra nodded in affirmation and slipped her pocket book back into her purse, and then lifted her paper grocery sack in her arms, and strode towards the front door. Mia kept the smile on her face even as she gave the checker twenty-five dollars for the groceries, and pushed the cart with five paper bags back out to the parking lot. Night had fallen upon Portland, and there was not a single star in the inky black sky overhead.  
Pale white light from the poles shone over her and the damp pavement as she ambled towards her car, and then proceeded to load up the back. A cool breeze kissed the side of her face and the very feel of it made her want to be next to Lars again. She smiled at the thought of him again; a tedious task of loading up the rear of the car with a month's worth of groceries did not seem so tedious anymore with him in mind.  
She pushed the cart into the corral across the pavement, and then doubled back to the butcher next door to the market for a pound of chorizo, sliced pastrami, and four pork chops. She then returned to the car to put all the meat into the rear next to the sack with the plantains inside, and then climbed into the driver's seat. She hesitated there for a moment to let the cold sensation on the side of her face fade out before she put the key into the ignition and drove back to the blue and white house.  
The driveway was still deserted by the time she returned.  
Odd, she thought, but it need not matter. She doubted Wayne would help her anyway as she proceeded to lug in the grocery bags, one under her arm on her first trip so she could unlock the front door and then two in each hand for the final two trips into the kitchen. Mia closed the door and hung her purse and her coat on the hooks next to the door, and then headed down to the kitchen yet again, but not to put away the groceries. She headed to the phone on the wall and dialed the number. It rang twice and he picked up.  
“Hello?” That accent again.  
“Hi, papacito.”  
“Oh—hello, min sexet pige. Interesting to hear your voice at this hour, I was just putting my shoes back on to go pick up James. We're having dinner over at my parents' house. Hvordan går det? How goes it?”  
“Say that again, what did you call me?”  
“Sexet pige. Sexy girl. 'Cause—you know.”  
“Oh, I see.” A smile crept over her face and she felt her skin growing warm again. “I wanted to ask you before I go back to work on Monday morning—my boss, Sandra, at the bakery wants to know how old you are.”  
“How old am I?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Right now, I'm double deuces, twenty-two. I'll be twenty-three on Boxing Day.”  
“Twenty-three, that was it! That's what I told her, but I just wanted to know from the horse's mouth.”  
“Horse? I'm a goat.”  
“Hey, at least you're a goat, I'm water.”  
“Water, 'cause you're so thirsty?”  
She chuckled at that.  
“Oh, perhaps.”  
“By the way, yesterday was Matt—Matt from Soundgarden—his birthday. He's twenty-four.”  
“Aw, happy birthday, Matt. But I just got back from the market and I'm going to make dinner for myself. Also—she and I were talking—apparently, because your birthday cake is—a special occasion—she told me we can do whatever we want, especially since you said 'surprise me.'”  
Silence on his end. Silence so loud that she wondered if she still had a connected phone line.  
“Are you there?”  
“…yeah. I'm just trying to—envision it now.”  
“I am thinking of—the red lace—and a certain part of my body that you like to touch.”  
She heard him breathe harder on the other end, and then he smacked his lips.  
“Mia, darling—I'm—I'm—phew—I'm getting ready to go to my parents' house, it's kind of a bad time. Are you sure Sandra allowed it?”  
“Yes, it's just for you after all. So come on. Come on, papacito.”  
He breathed into the mouth piece again.  
“I'm trying so hard—”  
“Hard?”  
“Hard. Okay. Yes. Give it to me, darling, so my face isn't as red as a tomato when I see James in a couple of minutes.”  
“I don't know now.”  
“What? What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what? What?”  
“Well, you are going to your parents' house and you are going to see James. I don't know now.”  
“I want to know about this cake. I wanna know now. I wanna—I wanna—I—wanna—”  
The tip of her tongue slid against the edges of her front teeth again and then around her lips.  
“My red lace, my hips, and your face right in between them,” she told him in a low voice, “and I will feed it to you if I must.” Then she raised her voice to a normal tone. “We are also entering a competition in the spring and I am thinking of something with dulce de leche.”  
“Oh—” He breathed into the mouth piece as if he had just experienced an orgasm.  
“Mm-hmm.”  
“Ohhh, darling—” He spoke in that soft croak once again. “—skat, honey pie, sexet pige—mmm, that's what I needed to hear. And good on the dulce de leche, too. Anyways, I have to leave.”  
“Okay, baby. You fill your tummy nice and full with all of your mother's love.”  
“And you go ahead and make yourself something tasty.” He made a little kiss noise into the phone before hanging up. She then hung up the receiver on the wall, and sighed through her nose, and felt the warmth well up inside of her. She took off her knit cap to run a hand through her hair and lift a few of the strands off of her neck.  
“Who was that?”  
The sound of his voice behind her caught her so off guard that she leapt towards the opposite wall and then whirled around to see Wayne standing in the doorway with his arms folded over his chest. She pressed a hand to her chest and bowed her head so he would miss the love bite on her neck.  
“It was—Marcia,” she stammered, feeling her heart thunder under the palm of her hand. “Jesus, Wayne, don't sneak up on me like that. I didn't even hear you come in.”  
“That was Marcia? When did you start calling her 'baby'?”  
“No, no, no, you misheard me. I said 'maybe.' I am feeling a little congested right now, but this week at the bakery will be so busy for us. So I was—I was running everything over with her.”  
He scowled at her while still keeping his arms folded over his chest.  
“Okay—so what's for dinner?”  
“Pork chops,” she answered, still keeping her head bowed. “With plantains and pineapple.”  
“No roast beef?”  
“I felt like having pork chops.”  
“You should've gotten roast beef.”  
“We're having pork—”  
Before she could finish, he lumbered over to her and back hand slapped her across the right side of her face. She dropped her knit cap onto the floor as her head snapped back and she staggered towards the kitchen window. She hoped he never saw the mark on the side of her neck as she lifted her gaze and brought a hand to her face. Pain seared across her skin, even though she pressed ever so gently with the tips of her fingers: the sting was enough to bring a tear to her eye. He glared at her and loomed before her like a raging bull ready to charge towards her. But he lunged for her, and yanked her close to him, and then he shoved his tongue down her throat. His mouth was parched and dry, and tasted like saltine crackers; his upper lip carried a faint smell of bourbon.  
He then stared into her face.  
“Remember what I said: everything I do is out of love for you. I love you, Mia. And when I married you, I swore to love you forever. I don't want to relegate to past tense now.”  
He shoved his tongue down her throat once more. She grunted and squirmed in his arms but he was much too strong. He stared into her face again and glared at the side of her neck.  
“What happened there?” he demanded, fingering the hickey Lars had left for her. She nibbled on her bottom lip as she watched his chest heave from being out of breath.  
“Well? What the hell happened there? Looks like a bruise but it's way too red.”  
She swallowed, anxious.  
“I—got burned a little.”  
“Burned? The fuck were you doing?”  
“Ashley and I were trying to build a fire last night and… an ember flew up and got me a bit. I woke up this morning with that.”  
Wayne hesitated for a moment before he tipped his head forward to kiss the mark with a hard, zealous kiss. She grimaced at the feel of his lips there, his lips on her lover's mark. He lifted his head to stare at her in the eye.  
“Can't wait for dinner,” he growled.  
“I have to—put things away first,” she pointed out. He shrugged and never took her eyes off of her.  
“Seems fair enough. But I'll be waiting in the living room.”  
He gave the mark another kiss before letting go of her shoulders and lumbering out of the room. She sighed and stared down at her knit cap laying on the floor and looking rather forlorn. She ran a hand through her hair once again, but this time the warm feeling inside of her disappeared and she felt the tears burgeoning. She stooped over to pick it up and put it back atop her head. She hoped Lars and James were having a wonderful evening at his parents' house as she put the chorizo and the pastrami in the meat drawer of the refrigerator.


	35. Chapter 35

Mia awoke to the sound of rain falling on the roof overhead and on the bedroom window. The whole room was pitch dark except for the faint glow outside of the window from the street lamps. She rolled her head over to see the other side of the bed, and the vacant space where Wayne had been laying. The blankets had been peeled back from the head of the bed.  
For a moment, she couldn't remember the day and then it struck her: it was Monday morning, but even just by not looking at the clock, she knew it was far too early for her to climb out of bed yet. She rolled over onto her left side and rested her hand on the empty pillow next to her, exposed to the open air. She was about to fall back asleep when a sharp searing pain shot from the back of her hand and surged up her arm.  
She screeched out in agony, and rolled back over onto the other side of bed, and fell onto the floor. She clutched onto her hand and whimpered in pain. The sole light she had with her entered the room from outside the window, and it wasn't enough for her to see what was coming for her. A sharp metallic clang! on the wall right next to her head sent her diving down to the floor in the darkness. She crawled about the floor in search of the bottom of the door when she felt something hard smack her right square on the butt. Mia stumbled forward but soon regathered herself when she felt something hard before her. She groped the wall with her aching hand and found the doorknob. She turned it right as Wayne chucked the thing at her again and it hit her in the back.  
She had no clue about it other than it was something heavy and metallic.  
She yelped out again right as she tore open the door and stumbled out into the dark hallway.  
“Come on, I barely hit you!” he shouted after her as she skidded into the kitchen. She didn't bother to turn on the light as she dove for the phone on the wall and blindly dialed a number: her hand ached too much for her to tell what she was dialing, but she knew it wasn't the police. The dial tone blared into her ear once as she slid down the wall and hunkered down in the corner. Her hand, her butt, and her back all ached from where he hit her, but that was the least of her problems. The dial tone rang again.  
“Oh—hello?” She recognized that accent and that low croak of a voice. She had called Lars in the middle of the night by mistake.  
“Lars—” she squeaked out, hardly containing the tears in her voice.  
“Mia?” his voice broke. She started to cry. “Mia? Mia, is that you, darling? What are you—are you crying?”  
“I just—I just—oh—”  
There was a rustling sound in the background and he cleared his throat.  
“Darling, darling, listen to me—it's okay. I'm here, I'm right here with you. Tell me—what's wrong? What is the matter? Tell me.”  
She whimpered again as she peeked around the corner at the sight of the pitch dark doorway on the other side of the room. She heard Wayne groaning in the back of the house. She couldn't bear the thought of telling Lars what had happened.  
“I—” she gasped out.  
“Yes?” he asked her in a sweet voice.  
“I—” She closed her eyes, but the tears ran down her cheek regardless of it.  
“I want you here.”  
“Well—” He cleared his throat. “—I am—sort of there with you. You can hear my voice—”  
“But it's not the same. I want you here. You're too far away—how far away is the Bay Area from here?”  
“From there? Oh, God, it's—almost four o'clock in the morning, darling. I can't really think, but I think it's a little more than—more than—one thousand kilometers, or about six hundred miles, I believe?”  
“You're much too far away, baby. I want you.”  
She sniffled and tried to swallow down the tears, but the pains in her body throbbed so much that it was impossible for her to stifle her emotions.  
“I just want to cuddle up next to you, and feed you chocolates, and watch cartoons. I want you. I want you. I—I want you—” Her voice broke; another tear streaked down her face.  
“Darling—Mia, my darling—my sweet—”  
She gasped and brushed away that tear.  
“—what are you doing for Christmas. I will find my way up there then so you don't have to send your birthday cake to me.”  
“Probably—Probably nothing. Just maybe—going to my parents' house.”  
“Okay. I'll pull double duties those two weeks. I'll be—em—going to my parents' house for the weekend before Christmas and I'll be staying there up until Christmas Eve. I'll get up there that night on the red eye on Christmas Eve, and I will be with you up there in Portland until that following Monday, for almost five days straight. Five days for you to give me my birthday cake, and my birthday dinner, and fill me up, and touch me, and feel me, and love me, and be all curled up next to me.”  
“What about—New Year's?”  
She heard him swallow.  
“How about—you come down here for New Year's? I'll go back on Monday morning and be with my parents for a couple of days and then you can come down on Wednesday to join us, if you can do it. I told them about you over dinner last night and they both love you already. My mother wants to meet you.”  
She sniffled again and closed her eyes.  
“I'll let you sleep in my bed with me, too,” he added in a small voice.  
“In your bed?”  
“In my bed. I'll get you a pillow for yourself and everything.”  
“You—You will?” She brushed away another tear.  
“Yeah. I'll go to one of the little boutiques here in town and I'll look around for a nice soft pillow for you. You're making me a cake for my birthday, and I want to give you something for Christmas. I'll get you a nice pillow and—maybe a tight lacy little teddy, too. Jerry's going to be down here with a couple of other guys tomorrow and I'll tell them what I'm doing.”  
She sniffled again.  
“Can I use your belly as a pillow, too?”  
“Of course, darling. You can always get close to me. You know me—I love being touched and held.”  
“Can I share some of your birthday cake?”  
“Of course, of course. It wouldn't be fair if I ate that whole thing solo. It'll be you and me, so yes—we can eat nothing but cake and dinner.”  
There was a soft scratching sound on his end; she sniffled yet again and brushed away another tear.  
“What was that?”  
“What was what?”  
“That—Th-That rustling noise.”  
“Oh, I forgot to shave yesterday morning. I'm thinking of growing it out a bit, too. I hope you don't mind.”  
“Not at all. I think—I think you would look really cute with a beard.”  
“And if it makes you feel any better, I'm—laying in bed right now in my underwear. Just my underwear, I don't have a shirt on. It's just me here at my place so of course I'm like this. And I've got the blankets like—lazily laying around my waist, and I'm leaning back against the head board.”  
“I wish I was there.”  
“I just got an idea for you to draw me.”  
“Like—your body in the buff?”  
“Exactly. You know, I have always had a deep, unconditional love of art, and I feel like baking, and what you and Marcia and your boss are going to do, is all a form of art. A form of art, mind you, that is completely edible. I thought—you know—you love my body so much, why not imitate it.”  
“So—So I can have it onhand when you are not around.”  
“So you can have it onhand when I'm not around, exactly! That'll be something to bear in mind when we get back together over Christmas. Er—erm—what's today, Monday?”  
“Yeah. I have to go back to work today. I woke up early and feeling—lonely.”  
Wayne groaned again, and that time included a guttoral hacking sound as if he was about spit up. She stuck out her tongue at the noise.  
“What the hell was that?” demanded Lars.  
“I—I really don't know. I need to get ready, so—”  
“Okay, skat. I will let you go. Give Marcia a hug for me.”  
“I will do that. And you go back to sleep.”  
“Of course, darling.” He made a light little kissing sound into the mouth piece before hanging up. She listened to the dial tone for a moment before she herself hung up the phone and then held onto her right hand to ease the stinging pain. She rubbed the pad of her thumb on the backs of her knuckles. Nothing was broken, but she would have to tell Marcia about it when she got dressed and ready for a brand new day at Smell the Magic in a couple of hours.

“I can't believe that asshole hit you again. I'm telling you, Mia, you need to get out of there. You have got to get away from him.”  
Marcia, who had clocked in early that morning, had pulled up the stool from behind the cash register so Mia could remain seated while they began preparing white chocolate and black cherry macarons for the Christmas season: bright festive red cookies baked to utter smoothness and sandwiched on either side of a creamy, buttery white chocolate filling which they accentuated with a hand made black cherry jam. Mia blended the almond flour, powdered sugar, and salt in the metal bowl in her lap with a spoon while Marcia separated the egg yolks from the whites and dripped the former into another metal bowl on the counter before the bright red mixer, while the latter went into a small Tupperware container and then the refrigerator on the other side of the room.  
“Do you know what he hit you with?” she asked Mia.  
“I don't know, something metal. Like he threw it against the wall and it made a loud metallic clanking noise.”  
“Huh.”  
“It was heavy, too. Like he hurled one of our skillets at me.”  
“That's probably what it was. You're still in pain, too, so that's probably it was. He hit you with something knowing he could do a lot of damage to you if you were a good girl and held still.”  
She then put the bowl back onto the mixer and added some cream of tartar into it before pressing the button on the side. She lingered there with her finger over the button.  
“You called Lars?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at her.  
“Yeah, I tried to call the cops but I ended up calling him instead.” Mia set down the spoon on the counter and then pushed the stool back a bit so as to reach into the cabinet before her legs.  
“That was kind of him to offer that to you, though. To come up here for Christmas and his birthday just to be with you. That's just—” Marcia shook her head as she pressed the button and the mixer whirred to life. Mia picked up a metal sieve with a handle and another bowl from inside the cabinet before her. She scooped up some of the almond flour and sugar and began to sift it into the neighboring bowl. She smacked the side of the sieve with haste until small grains of almonds clumped up with the sugar at the bottom. That was when Marcia spoke again over the loud whir of the mixer.  
“Have you seen the red food coloring anywhere?”  
“I think it's in the fridge,” Mia shouted, sifting another spoonful of flour and sugar into the bowl and repeated the process. Marcia stepped over to the refrigerator once more and took a peek inside for the phial of bright red food coloring; she lifted her head out of the box with it in hand and then turned to look behind Mia's head into the front part of the bakery.  
“Hello! Good morning! We'll be with you in a minute!” she called out. She set the phial down on the counter next to the mixer and stared into the bowl to check on the egg whites. As she spooned in more flour and sugar for sifting, Mia found a moment to turn her head and see a tall wiry man with long fine blond hair and wrapped in a black leather jacket and faded blue jeans. He looked like he belonged in a band in conjunction with that of Lars, James, Kirk, and Jason.  
“You want to go take care of him when you're done?” Marcia asked Mia in a loud voice right next to her ear. “I'll fold in the dry ingredients with the meringue.”  
“Yeah, sure—I'm almost done here, just got this little bit to tend to—alright.”  
She set the spoon down and, her back aching upon standing but she fought it off to step into the front of the bakery to help out the man. He showed her a kind smile as she strode behind the glass display.  
“Good morning,” she greeted him.  
“Good morning,” he returned the favor in a velvety voice.  
“What can I get for you?” She reached into the box of gloves on the table next to her and slipped two of them on over her hands before opening the display at the back.  
“What do you recommend?”  
“Well—” She gestured to the rows of chocolate donuts with that fiery red glaze on top. “—we've got my specialty, my Puerto Rican donuts.”  
“What makes them Puerto Rican?”  
“They're chocolate with a bit of spice and a shot of tequila for a nice little kick.”  
“Hmm. I'd like two of those, please.”  
“Okay—” She reached down for a paper bag to put in two of her donuts with light filmy tissue paper.  
“And a couple of those good looking danishes right next to you, too—speaking of danishes, do you happen to know a guy named Lars?” he asked her. She stopped once she had picked up one of the danishes.  
“Yeah, I do.” A nervous smile crept over her face as she slipped it in over the donuts. “How'd you know?”  
“I'm Jerry. I'm the guy who helped look for you. I thought you looked familiar, too. I saw him up in Seattle and he just wouldn't stop thanking me and Ben for finding you on the beach.”  
“Wow! Are you going to see Lars today?” She slipped in the second danish before setting the bag on the counter next to the cash register and peeling off her gloves.  
“I am. I figured why not swing by here for a bite of breakfast for myself and my roommate before we fly on down to San Francisco. We got down here on Saturday morning for a show that night and we both have a couple more days off from our jobs so we're gonna go hang out with him. Ain't got nothing else to do but hang out in a basement all day up there, anyway.”  
“Might as well do something different—that will be twelve dollars.”  
“Oh, shit, twelve dollars for all of that! Can't beat that with a stick—” He handed her a twenty dollar bill and she stuck it into the drawer, and began counting out the change. Jerry then leaned closer to her face.  
“Are you and him—like—together at all?” he asked her in a lower tone of voice.  
“I—I think we are,” she answered, although she felt speaking in a low voice was unnecessary because Marcia still had the mixer switched on.  
“Sure is long distance, though. You're up here, he's down there, six hundred miles between the two of you—I'll tell him you guys should totally have dinner together.”  
“He is coming up for Christmas and his birthday, though.” She handed him six dollars in change and he slipped the dollar bills into his front pocket.  
“Still, you guys should have dinner together. When we found you on the beach, he was a mess and he said some things to you. I don't know what he said to your face, I don't speak Danish, but it—spoke to me, if you can say that. Anyway, thank you so much for these—” He picked up the paper bag and held it close to his chest like he would a teddy bear. “—and I hope to see you again—what's your name again?”  
“Mia.”  
“Mia! I hope to see you again.” Jerry winked at her before he stepped out the front door of the bakery into the shades of violet and dark gray making up the rainy early morning in Portland. The mixer switched off right then and Mia stood to her feet and ambled to the other room, her back pulsating with that ache. She lingered in the doorway with her hand on the side of the door frame.  
“What do you think Lars said to me when I was in the hospital?” she asked Marcia, who began folding in the dry sifted flour and sugar into the stiff pure white meringue with the flat head spatula.  
“When you got hit in the head and you were out like a light?”  
“Yeah.”  
“I have no clue. It sounded like bass ackwards German, but I obviously know it wasn't, though. Why?”  
“Just curious. That guy who was in here was Jerry, the other of the two boys who helped find me. He suggested Lars and I have dinner together.”  
“You should. You totally should. Whenever you guys had food together, someone else was always with you, either in the background or right there with you. You guys should totally have dinner together, alone, as a couple. I know Kirk and I are going to have dinner later on tonight. And then he and Sonia are going out on—Thursday, I think.”  
“You guys are all going out and you're all okay with it?”  
“Yeah.” Marcia tipped the bowl to pour in more dry ingredients and then picked up the spatula again to incorporate it all into the meringue. “Apparently he likes to see himself as a swinger of sorts, like last night, he was parading about the house in a bathrobe with one of those chocolate cigars in his mouth, trying to be like Hugh Hefner. Although I feel like it's a little odd to have my kid sister to go out with him, too.”  
She turned the bowl by the rim as she folded the batter together to a smooth paste. She then picked up the bottle of red food coloring and unscrewed the lid.  
“I have a question, where's Lars going to go?”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Where's he going to sleep? Wayne doesn't know about him and coincidentally, he doesn't know about Wayne.”  
Mia stopped in her tracks. Perhaps it was the fact she called him so early in the morning, but she didn't think about that part.  
“Better hope Wayne's going to be with his parents for those five days because I don't want you two staying in a hotel. And Sonia and I are pretty cramped as is with Kirk—”  
“My parents' house,” she blurted out. Marcia gasped and her eyes gleamed.  
“Yes! Oh, God, I totally forgot about your parents for a moment. But wait, what if they ask you about Wayne?”  
“I'll tell them we got divorced. It's no big deal. Trust me, Marsh, I've got this. I've got this. Now, let's make these cookies.”


	36. Chapter 36

Over the next couple of weeks, Mia bode her time both at Smell the Magic and at Curl Up and Dye, while doing what she could to keep her distance from Wayne: she soon found out it was one of their cast iron skillets he had chucked at her that night, and she had found it laying on the counter in the kitchen when she arrived home on Monday afternoon. Even though he had apologized to her, she didn't believe him.  
“Also, I'm not going to be around for Christmas vacation, either,” he added over dinner that night, “Dad wants me to come with him down to California, to Squaw Valley.”  
“What will you be doing in Squaw Valley?” she asked as she scooped up some of the Spanish rice with the refried beans on her plate.  
“Not sure. We'll play it by ear.”  
Since his new job was an all day affair, Mia found the time to rest for a bit in the house before heading into town in search of those knee high boots, any sort of knee high boots. She thought of wearing them to the baking competition in April, that is if the judges allowed high heels.  
She spent that week in search throughout the small boutiques and shoe shops in Portland: more often than not, she stumbled upon boots with small heels, or regular high heeled shoes, or suede platforms. The sole time she did find a pair of boots with a high heel, they were a hideous dirty yellow vinyl and the price tag hung high over her current pay check from Smell the Magic. Mia drove over the Morrison Bridge three times in a single afternoon on Wednesday following her shift at the bakery in search of shoe shops with those knee high boots, similar to those Trent wore over Thanksgiving; that was before she finally called it a night and returned to the blue and white house.  
On Thursday, a day in which she had to work at Curl Up and Dye, she strode past a shop on the sidewalk with thigh high boots nestled in the far right side of the window near the front door. She stopped there on the sidewalk to gaze on at them, and their tall black legs stretching up from the feet. The leather making them up glistened in the white lights behind the window display, and the sight of the tall three inch stiletto heels made her ankles and her calves tremble at first, but she knew if she wore those on a regular basis, the muscles in her legs would strengthen, and she and Lars could perhaps make love in much longer instances. She peered over at the sign over the door to find out that it was a leather shop. Perhaps she could swing by here on her way home from work that day, that is if they hadn't sold those boots over the day.  
She bowed her head, and crossed the street at the corner, and padded over the sidewalk to the glass front doors of the salon. She thought about those thigh high boots and surprising Lars with them. His eyes widening at the sight of them and his chest heaving at the very sight of her standing over him. She wanted him to beg from her, for him to beg for it as she loomed over him with those tall boots. The very thought of taking Lars for herself aroused her.  
Mia entered into the faint smells of herbal shampoo and soft soaps, and proceeded to clock in at the front counter when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see Trent standing behind her, his black hair mussied and damp from the light morning drizzle or from something else, his black overcoat hanging around his slender body, and the buckles on his boots jutting out from underneath the hems of his jeans with a shiny silvery gloss.  
“Oh, hi!” she greeted him, blinking several times. “What are you doing here? Are you getting a cut?”  
“Nah, I actually got here first thing to meet up with Mike—and the two of us are getting trims, but not cuts. I also want to tell you that at some point or another, you should come back to Seattle with us. There's a band up there, Green River, I think they're called. They're playing a big show up there to get their new record released. I guess their label doesn't have enough funds and they're trying to get something together to put it out in the new year. Soundgarden will be there, and so will—Nirvana, I think they're called.”  
“Oh? When is it?”  
“January, I think.” He scanned her face; it took her a second to realize that, once the cold feeling from outside faded away from her skin, she was blushing.  
“Are you okay? You're awfully—crimson. It's not even that cold outside, either.”  
Mia glanced behind her to see if anyone else was in there; the two of them were the sole people in the front of the salon. Danielle was nowhere to be seen, so she returned to Trent, who had loomed in closer to her face.  
“I want Lars so much,” she whispered to him. “I want him here. I can't wait anymore. I want him.”  
“What do you mean, you can't wait?”  
“He's supposed to come up—Christmas.”  
“That's a week away.”  
“Yeah, but—I really—I really can't wait, Trent. I walked past a leather shop a bit ago, and there were these tall thigh high boots in the window, and I just got thinking—and now I feel like I'll explode if I don't do something—I just… keep thinking…”  
He raised an eyebrow at her.  
“What are you thinking about?”  
“Well—I'm already here at work. I don't think it's really the best place to—” She winced.  
“To what?”  
“Touch myself.”  
“Well, surely there's a place where you can do that.”  
“There's a nook back there—” She gestured behind her to the rest of the salon and the sight of the nook receding back from the wall, the same nook where she fed Lars that pie.  
“Well, go back in there. Mike won't be here for a bit and I'll stall if anyone tries to come in here, too.”  
“I don't know, Trent—”  
“Tell you what, I'll come with you back there.”  
She nibbled on her bottom lip before nodding her head and taking off her purse and her coat. They ambled towards the nook, right before her station for the day, and she set down her things. Danielle still had not poked her head out to greet her or Trent, so they turned into the nook and past the table to the far end, the same place as before. Mia turned to Trent with an uneasy look upon her face.  
“It's alright, Mia. I'll stay right here and you can do your thing. Trust me—I'm dating your best friends' mom so I have seen a few things. But I won't look, though.”  
“What if Dana comes back here?” she asked in a hushed voice.  
“No one will come back here,” he reassured her, squatting down before her.  
“People do walk back here sometimes, Trent.”  
“No one will walk back here, though, Mia. I promise.”  
Mia swallowed as she gazed down at Trent squatting on the linoleum floor before her with his forearms resting upon his knees. Something told her to trust him with his word. She took a seat down on the floor right in front of him. He bowed his knee to the floor and rolled over so he was seated on the linoleum before her.  
“Trent, I have to ask you—”  
He glanced at her over his shoulder.  
“Where'd you get those boots?”  
“Do you know that little shop up in Georgetown?”  
“Yeah.”  
“That's where I got 'em, but if you know where to look, you can find some with high heels, and you were talking about those thigh high ones you saw earlier and those are even better. Maybe—just maybe—you can find a couple of garter belts, too. I'll tell Mike about it when you're done here.”  
She was about to undo the button on her jeans when she stopped herself.  
“This almost feels wrong without Lars here.”  
“Can you picture him before you?”  
“Yeah.”  
“I also have a suggestion for you later on, too, whenever you get the chance. Write a letter to him. A real dirty letter to him, and give it to him when you see him again. Go all out with it, too. Really, he's giving you meat so give him sugar. Give him all the sugar you can possibly give him, baby girl. That's your reason and now use that for your control. Look at those words. Look at those dark and dirty words you want to write to him and feel them. Feel them as you would feel him.”  
She closed her eyes and imagined herself putting a pen down a piece of paper. She started thinking about what she wanted to write to him. Anything. Everything. Write everything she wanted to do with him and to do to him.  
“Yes,” she breathed out as she unbuttoned her jeans, which had tightened up a bit from the cold outside and from the feeling in her hips.  
Baby, it's cold outside, she thought to herself.  
“Get down with it, Mia. Get down in it.”  
She closed her eyes as she peeled her jeans to halfway down her thighs. She then reached down the crotch of her cotton panties with her left hand. The image of herself writing to him only brightened as her fingers crept over the fledgling sprigs of hair on her skin. She started caressing herself right there in front of Trent and in a place where Danielle could walk in at any given second. Her lips parted as she thought of putting down the pen, Lars' pen, and following it up with a slow strip before him.  
“Let me—” she whispered out loud. “—Let me be—Let me be your mother—papacito—”  
She shot out her tongue as she pictured Lars before her. She beckoned him closer to her with every touch of the outside of her clitoris from the tips of her fingers. That delicate skin grew warmer and warmer with each stroke; she imagined his face looming before her, with his mouth parted a bit and tiny sprigs of hair lining his upper lip, and all along his chin. How she wanted to kiss his face right then, to feel that coarse hair on her lips all while she ran her fingers through his long hair before running her hands down his back to the soft flesh on his waist.  
She closed her mouth and rolled her head to the side. The image of her soft lips on coarse hair and her curious hands on his softening waist caused a stir of butterflies in her stomach, which was then followed by a light tingling sensation between her legs. She continued to stroke herself with her index and middle fingers as the image of her kissing that scruff on his face and her squeezing him swirled over and over throughout her mind. The tingling sensation between her legs only persisted; her tongue lapped out of her mouth once again. Every touch, every feel, every tingle, it all piled on top of each other.  
Mia gasped. Those thigh high boots looming on either side of his head and then she reached down to hold onto his neck with the softest of touches from either of her hands. And then she began feeding him his birthday cake, one small piece in her fingers, one piece at a time until there was nothing left to fill him so full.  
“—oh—” she breathed out, her voice soft and light like feathers. “—oh, baby boy—”  
“Mia—” Trent's voice interfered with her fantasy. She opened her eyes to see him looming before her face and she gasped at the sight of him.  
“Mike's here. And I'm thinking Danielle will come out of her office at any second.”  
“Does she have paper?” was all she could think of at that second.  
“Does she have paper? I'm not sure, but—I think my pretty hate machine in the other room does.” He glanced down at Mia's hips for a split second; she glanced down with him and the sight of her hand all the way underneath the band of her underwear, which rested against the top of her wrist. She slid her hand out from between her legs and from under the waist band, and shook it about a bit before redoing the button of her jeans. Trent helped her up using her free hand and she darted past him out of the nook and to the other side of the salon to the bathroom to wash her hands.  
As she scrubbed her hands down with the soft smelling soap, she returned to the note she had in mind to seduce Lars.  
“I want to smell the softness emanating off of your hair,” she said aloud in a low voice as she ran her fingers over the back of her hand and the clean scent from the foam tickled her nose. She pressed the tips of her fingers into the fleshy part of her palm; “and I want to feel that lush, silky flesh on your sexy waist in my hungry hands. And I want to feel your fever as I kiss you.”  
She began rinsing off; the warm water cascaded over her skin.  
“I want to feel you—deeply,” she continued, lowering her voice to a delicate whisper so no passerby could hear over the trickle of water from the faucet head, “so deep inside of me. And I want you to play with me. I want you to lay me on my back and give me everything I deserve.”  
She smiled at that as she switched off the water and then turned to the paper towel dispenser. She gazed on at her own reflection as she dried off her hands with the brown paper towel.  
“Come closer, baby. No—slither closer to me. Devour me with those bright green eyes—while I slip you your cake, piece by piece into your famished mouth. Birthday boy. Papacito.”  
She threw away the paper towel and tossed her hair back from her head before heading out of the bathroom. She met up with Trent and Mikayla, the latter of whom was already seated at Mia's station. She handed her a small, bright red note pad of lined paper the size of a slice of bread and a white pen with a black cap.  
“Trent told me,” she whispered, flashing her a wink. Mia smiled back at her as she took the note pad and stuffed it into her jeans pocket so as to trim Mikayla's hair. Over the course of the day, she added lines to her letter to Lars, little by little, until she had filled out four whole pages of writing. She was eager to give him the letter when she saw him. Since Wayne was going to be out of town, she would not have to worry about checking into a hotel; she was also spared from explaining to her parents about Lars.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Every time I comb my hair  
> Thoughts of you get in my eyes  
> You're a sinner, I don't care  
> I just want your creamy thighs."  
> -"Erotic City", Prince

After work, Mia decided to spend the rest of that week's paycheck on ingredients for spicy chocolate macarons and a custom pair of thigh high boots at the leather shop: she found out the ones in the window display were about two sizes too small for her feet and so she asked the clerks in there to measure out her feet and her legs.  
“Black leather, please,” she requested right there at the counter. She browsed about the aisles while one of them constructed the boots for her out of the shiny black leather in the back room. There were crafting kits on several of the shelves, and she had an idea to make James, Kirk, and Jason special straps for their guitars out of the fine beige leather on display and imprint whatever they requested on the inside.  
Mikayla and Trent entered the shop right then and she hurried towards them with the soles of her shoes padding on the floor. The former grinned at Mia as she came closer to them.  
“There she is. We were just going to invite you to Marcia and Sonia's house—I guess they're throwing a little party with Kirk tonight, and then they're going to have another one for Christmas.”  
“I'm getting my own pair of boots,” she told them, adjusting the strap on her purse.  
“Thigh highs? Like the ones in the window?” Trent raised his eyebrows at that.  
“Exactly like the ones in the window,” she echoed, turning back to the rest of the small, brightly lit shop.  
“I am also thinking of baking some macarons for when Lars comes up here next week,” she added in a low voice.  
“Just for him?” asked Mikayla.  
“Just for him. I'm gonna feed him so well and then—play with him.”  
“Lots of homemade stuff, I assume?”  
“Homemade food, and I'm going to take him into town for things to eat, too.”  
“Mia?” the clerk called out from the back of the shop. That was her cue: Mia returned to them while holding onto her purse. She stood in the doorway right as he showed her those tall boots of shiny black leather and with silver buckles on the top hems and down by the ankles.  
“Try 'em on,” he beckoned her with a shy grin.  
She stripped off her purse, then her coat, and then her shoes. She took a seat on the bench before the table and rolled up the hems of her jeans to her knees. Mikayla entered into the doorway right as Mia slipped the bottoms of the boots over her feet, which arched with the shape of the two and a half inch heels. She then wrapped the leathers around her calves, and slid the tops under her rolled up jeans. She flashed the clerk and Mikayla both a grin and they both knew that they fit her like a glove.  
She fastened the buckles and they hugged her bare legs; she unrolled her jeans so as to keep them hidden from view.  
Mikayla held onto her hand as she climbed to her feet; she wobbled a bit but soon stood there like a statue in the middle of the floor. The clerk grinned at her and Mikayla eyed the stilettos underneath her heels.  
“Oh, these are sexy, Mia,” she remarked in a hushed voice, “Lars is gonna get be so horny when he sees you. May I suggest not wearing a bra, either—and do you have garters? Like for your thighs?”  
“I don't.”  
“I saw some black lace right back here—” Mikayla peered at the shelf outside of the door and a handful of tulles of lace.  
“Lace is fifty cents a yard,” said the clerk.  
“I'll take two yards of that one inch thick lace.” She held up two fingers and flashed Mia a playful grin.

The day before Christmas Eve, Wayne left Portland for California without another word, which left Mia alone in the house for a full day, which meant she had the time to make macarons and finish Lars' birthday cake. She and Marcia had baked the dark chocolate layers that day before clocking out at Smell the Magic for their five day long break and had began frosting it when Mia changed her mind and decided to decorate it at home. Wayne wasn't around so he couldn't question why she had a two tier chocolate cake with white frosting on the kitchen table, and why she was making it while in her teddy, a pair of black underwear, the lace garters Mikayla had crafted out for her around her thighs, and her thigh high boots, the latter of which he had no idea about: she kept them in the trunk of her car until he left.  
She piped out fiery red frosting through a narrow tipped piping bag to imitate the patterns on her red lace underwear. Those were going around the bases of the tiers; she then set the cookie sheets in the refrigerator. She then took the same piping bag to make an image of herself on the top tier out of darker frosting: it was tricky because the frosting had firmed up from the chill in the kitchen, but she managed to draw out her own face and a hand running through her dark hair as if enticing him to eat the whole cake.  
Once she had run out of frosting, she turned to her box of fondant, and took it out and began to mold it like she would clay. She rolled it on the counter with the heavy stone rolling pin until it lay flat and warm before her like unbaked porcelain. Using the edge of a knife, she cut out crescent shaped slivers from the fondant and set them aside for a moment. Once the fondant had been perforated with crescent shaped holes, she took the small air brush from the bakery, of which Sandra lent her for the evening, and painted the slivers bright pink followed by a rich scarlet. She set down the air brush, and began molding the fondant again, and repeated the process. When the paint was dry, careful not to ruin the slivers, she pieced them together to form what resembled a flower, and eventually what looked to be two pink and red lilies.  
Once the lace firmed up inside of the refrigerator, she took it out and lifted the first piece with her index finger and her thumb, and ever so carefully wrapped it around the base of the top tier. She pushed it against the frosting and hung there for a second to make sure it stuck in place before doing it again with the bottom tier. She was careful to pick up both of the flowers by the bases and set them down on the bottom tier, one on each side.  
Once the cake was finished, she stepped over towards the phone, the heels of her boots clonking over the linoleum all the while. She picked up the receiver and dialed Marcia and Sonia's number. It rang twice, and then—  
“Hello?” a man's voice answered.  
“Kirk?”  
“Yes, who's this?”  
“Mia.”  
“Oh, hi. I thought that was you but I wasn't sure. What's—” The loud crash of glass breaking emerged from the background behind him. “—going on?”  
“I just finished Lars' birthday cake and called Marcia and Sonia to tell them. What was that?”  
“Oh, just a couple of beer bottles. James, Dave, and Ashley all came over a bit ago. We're gonna have a little party tonight.”  
“Another one?”  
“This is a Christmas one, and also because Sonia and Ashley finished out this time at school.”  
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right! They're on Christmas break starting today.”  
“You guys should totally come over, if and when you'd like. Bring some of that cake with you.”  
“I'll be sure to tell him—and when you get the chance, could you tell Marcia and Sonia that I finished Lars' cake, pretty please?”  
“Of course, honey. Don't stay up too late, alright?”  
“Of course,” she chuckled at that. “Same to you, too.”  
“Gladly.” And with that, Kirk hung up the phone and she followed suit. Mia then had an idea on what to do with that four page note she had written to Lars in the salon; she returned to the bedroom to fish out the pages from her purse. She stuck them into the waist band of her panties over her hip, and then ambled back to the kitchen, and to the sink to wash her hands and prepare making the macarons.  
No sooner had she frosted the fiery red cookies and sandwiched them together with the spicy chocolate filling when a knock on the door caught her attention.  
“That was fast,” she muttered aloud.  
She set down the knife and straightened her teddy before heading towards the door: the stiletto heels on the boots made soft thumping sounds on the carpet of the foyer. She flung open the door to face the chilly evening and Lars standing on her doorstep with a silky purple pillow tucked underneath his arm.  
“Hello, da—ah—rling—” His voice quivered and lifted in tone as he stared up at her; she stood a mere inch over the crown of his head, but it was enough to leave him gazing at her with a mesmerized expression upon his face. She took a step back, the heel of her boots making faint clinking noises all the while, to let him into the foyer of the house. He never took his eyes off of her as he shut the door behind him. Mia scanned the short plumes of dark hair beginning to line his chin and his rounded jaw, following by his neck, which appeared to be thickening, and then back up to the light, feathery bangs over his forehead. She dropped her gaze to his body, at his tailored shoulders beneath his jacket and the tiniest, slightest bump poking up from underneath the bottom hem of his shirt. His pupils had dilated at the sight of her and even though his lips had parted just a hair, she could see he began to drool on himself.  
“Are you okay?” she asked, twirling a strand of hair around her index finger.  
“Ye—” He cleared his throat and licked his lips. “—yeah.”  
“You don't look okay.”  
“I am,” he said, absentminded. “Did—Did you grow?”  
She pressed her hands to her hips and turned to the side to show him the boots stretching over her knees, and the garter belts on her thighs right under the leg holes of her underwear. He clutched at himself as he gaped at her and fell to his knees with a heavy thud! upon the floor, and dropped her pillow next to her.  
“Oh, holy fucking—fock—mama—”  
She took a step forward and stooped down to hold his face in her hands: the edges of the papers scraped against the bottom of her breast. The short stubble on his face brushed against the insides of her hands. Her tongue slithered all around the edges of her mouth before she spoke up again.  
“I have something on my waist for you,” she whispered. He swallowed and dropped his gaze to her chest and her belly for a moment before reaching up to the bottom of the teddy. He spotted the papers resting upon her hip.  
“Is that it?” he asked, never lifting his gaze from her body.  
“It is.”  
He licked his bottom lip and picked the papers out from the waist band of her panties. She knelt down on one knee before him; it was difficult from the high heel but she managed to linger right in front of him as he read the note.  
His chest heaved as he read all four pages in one fell swoop; at one point, he ran a hand through his hair and his round cheek bones turned bright pink. She returned her hands to the sides of his face and stared into his eyes again with her lips parted.  
“Take off all your clothes and meet me at the end of the hall. I have something for you. A couple of things, actually.”  
Lars showed her a nervous smile but then stuffed the pages into his coat pocket, and removed his coat. She removed her hands as she climbed to her feet, albeit with a bit of wobbling from the stilettos, but she soon gathered herself and returned to the kitchen with a sashay to her hips. She heard him hanging up his coat on the hook next to the front door, but she focused on his birthday cake.  
Mia took out a knife to carve out a large slice with that pink and red lily on top, and placed it on a small plate for him. She picked up four of the bright red macarons—two for him and two for her—and placed them on the edge of the plate next to the slice. She strode down the hall to the bedroom, where he awaited for her on the edge of the bed, stripped naked, and with his hair tousled and collected on the side of his head.  
“Oh—” he gasped, his tongue lapping out from his mouth.  
“Yes.”  
“Is—Is—Is that—?” His eyes widened at the sight of the lily.  
“It is. Feliz compleano, papacito.”  
She presented him the plate and the fork. He licked his lips and his face returned to that bright pink blush once again.  
“Feed me one of those cookies,” he commanded in a low voice, “behage.”  
She picked up the first macaron closest to him and held it up to his mouth. He opened his mouth and bit down on the side, the outer shell of the cookies making low crunching noises. He stared at her hard as he chewed it at such a slow pace.  
His eyes rolled up to the top of his head and gave her a loud groan inside of his throat. He set the plate on the nightstand and threw himself onto his back. She scanned his body, at his deepening chest and his belly which she could tell had filled out even more from the previous time they saw each other. He had eaten well at his parents' house and when he was with Jerry, and then he swallowed the macaron.  
“Dominate me,” Lars sputtered, his voice cracking.  
She lifted her knee, and placed it next to his bare thigh, and placed herself into a push up position over him. She tossed her hair back as she hovered over his face.  
“Would you like me to get the rope?” she suggested in a sweet whisper.  
“Later, honey pie, later,” he encouraged her, “but I want you to dominate me. Ride the lightning, min sexet pige. Min elsker—”  
She kissed him on the mouth and then reached down to peel off her panties. She slid them down her thighs and over her knees, and then kicked them off onto the floor behind her. She sat down, straddling his hips, and began to ride.  
“Give—Give me—Give me another cookie—” he gasped. She reached behind her for a second macaron and slipped it into his mouth, all while she gyrated her hips and rode him.  
“This is hot,” he said with his mouth full.  
“I know,” she breathed out, feeling her heart race. They were doing it.  
Mia and her mister-ess were having sex on her and her husband's bed, meanwhile Lars was about to have his cake and eat it, too.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "One nation under a groove,  
> gettin' down just for the fuck of it.  
> One nation, win it or lose,  
> nothing can stop us now."  
> -"Bop Gun (One Nation)", Ice Cube feat. George Clinton

“Would you like another cookie?” she asked him as she massaged his belly with the palms of her hands.  
“Behage. Then—give me that cake.”  
Mia reached behind her to the plate for another macaron and then inserted it into Lars' mouth; all the while, she kept her legs spread over his hips. She knew she had him in the palm of her hand when he closed his eyes and took in half of the cookie in a light, dainty bite, and then he proceeded to feel out the lush chocolate and the nuggets of spices inside of the cookie. She watched him roll his head to the side as the flesh underneath his chin swelled and then sank back down with the movements of his lower jaw. He swallowed the bite of cookie and then pointed at his mouth: she gave him the rest of the macaron and he ate it up right there.  
He opened his mouth to let out a soft moan and then he rolled his head back to face her with his pupils dilated and his cheek bones starting to flush from the heat of the cookies. The yellow light from the lamp washed over his face and made his skin appear darker than normal.  
“Choke me—” he croaked out in a husky voice.  
“Choke you,” she echoed.  
“Choke me, min elsker. Choke me. Do it.”  
Mia leaned forward and wrapped her hands around his neck: she pressed the pads of her thumbs against the soft flesh making up his throat. He grinned at her as she pressed harder.  
“Come on—” he coaxed her, still in a husky voice, “—come on, skat—harder—trust me on this—”  
She nibbled on her bottom lip but pressed down a bit harder upon his throat. She watched his cheeks flush into a deeper shade of red, which was then followed by the heaving motions in his chest shortening in breath. He gasped for air but she had too firm of a grip on his throat. His eyes rolled up towards the back of his head and the cherry red color in his lips washed away to bright pink followed by light violet, and then Mia let go of him.  
Lars gasped, his lungs filling with air and the color returning to his face in a bright, healthy blush. He gaped at her with his pupils fully dilated like big black holes and his mouth gaping open with a sugar; she held onto his face to feel the incoming scruff against her hands.  
“—I'm ready to die for you,” she whispered into his face.  
“Would you?”  
“If I die licking chocolate off of your body and this soft tummy of yours,” she confessed as she took a brief glimpse down to his belly, a slightly round bump lined with tiny sprigs of dark hair, on the middle of his body; “it'd be the best death in the history of deaths. Would you like your cake now?”  
“Oh, yes please.”  
She lifted herself off of his hips just in time to see that pearly white liquid ooze out from the tip of his dick; she glanced over at him with her eyes gleaming.  
“That was close, baby boy,” she told him, climbing off of the bed for the plate of cake on the nightstand; the shabby mattress creaked from underneath her weight but Wayne was out of the question at that point. She handed it to him even though he still reclined back on his elbows.  
Something caught her eye, something bright pink and slender right next to his belly button.  
“What's the matter?” he questioned, taking the plate from her and laying down on his back.  
“Is that a stretch mark?” she asked, running her index finger on the slight groove on his skin.  
“Indeed it sure is. I didn't notice it until just yesterday when I was at my parents' house, either.”  
He picked up the fork and began eating the slice of cake while laying on his back.  
“I see your wounds are healing nicely, too,” he noted. Mia pressed her hands to her hips, still standing there with her underwear down by her ankles. She eyed his tip and the sticky fluid starting to drip down the shaft.  
“Would you like a napkin?” she suggested.  
“Yes, please,” he said with his mouth full of cake. He lay his head down on the mattress and closed his eyes. She tugged her panties back up her legs and over her hips before heading into the bathroom for a few squares of tissue to help him clean up. Once she switched on the light, something else had caught her eye: she peered at the plunger nestled in the corner next to the water tank of the toilet. A deep crimson red smear of something gaped back at her from the rubber head of the plunger.  
“That's new,” she whispered, fingering the front part of her forehead and the healed mark left behind from the wound. She took the tissues and returned to the bedroom, and leaned against the side of the doorway.  
“Lars—” she called.  
“Yeff?” he replied, his mouth full of cake once again; he lifted his head to take a better look at her from the bed.  
“What did you say to me when I was in the hospital? When I was comatose?”  
He lay his head back down so as to finish chewing the bite of cake. He swallowed down the bite and lay there in silence with the plate upon his deep chest and the fork resting on the inside of his hand, which he kept in mid air as if preparing to take another bite. But he never took another bite, and instead gazed up at the ceiling overhead. She strode towards the bed with the heels of her boots making soft padding sounds on the carpet. She layered two of the tissues over each other and lined her hand with them to wipe off his tip. She returned to the bathroom and chucked the tissues in the waste basket, and spotted the plunger once again.  
When Mia returned to the bedroom yet again, he still had not budged, nor had he moved his line of sight from the ceiling. She wondered about that red smudge on the head of the plunger, and she hoped that it was a mere smear of paint and not something else.  
“I told you,” he began, his voice cutting through the silence in the room. His tongue shot out from his mouth to lick off a few crumbs on his upper lip; “I told you—and now understand, I was panicking when I said this. I told you—” He closed his eyes again and sighed through his nose. “—'jeg elsker dig. Lad mig ikke forlade mig.' Which is—my country's way of saying 'I love you. Please don't leave me.'”  
Mia's knees quivered and buckled; she caught her balance and dove to the bed right next to him. Lars clung to the plate and the fork, and she could see there was a mere sliver of frosting left behind, but none of that mattered to her. Nothing else mattered to her at that moment. She hung over him on her hands and knees. He stared up at her for a moment before sloughing off a large piece of frosting with the edge of his fork; he popped it into his mouth and never took his eyes off of her.  
“When we were in the cabin,” he began through the corner of his mouth, “and you know—when you hugged me around the waist after we weighed ourselves, it was the sweetest feeling to have your arms around me like that. I feel loved, so loved, when I am with you. In fact—” He swallowed down the frosting. “—when James and I were at my parents' house, my mum made mashed potatoes and gravy. And the gravy had little pieces of ground beef mixed inside, and they had a little kick to them like chorizo, I started to feel a little—aroused, I might say?”  
“Really?”  
“Mm-hmm.” He picked up the last remaining piece of frosting with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. “That warm, full feeling inside of my stomach—that warm, tender feeling I get on the subzero pitch dark nights back in Denmark—not only escapes from my heart, but apparently my dick, too. I love you, Mia. I love you and I want you.” He swallowed the frosting, and took the plate off of his chest, and lay it on the surface of the bed next to him.  
“Oh—Oh, kiss me, baby boy—”  
“Only if you kiss me.”  
She lunged for his lips and tasted the frosting and the chocolate on the inside of his mouth. She held onto his face for a second and then ran her fingers through his hair. His hands searched for the middle of her back so to tug her down to his chest; Mia felt his fingers entwine through the strands of her hair. She raised her right leg and brushed the sole of her boot against the wall over the head board of the bed. Lars yanked his head away from her in order to speak again.  
“At some point during these five days we've got together—let's go to an all you can eat place. Fill me up, darling.”  
“It's a plan,” she confirmed in a delicate whisper, bringing her mouth back to his lips.  
“I want more sugar—” his voice carried out on a soft moan in between kisses.  
“More sugar?”  
“Yes. And I know you do, too.”  
She gazed into his eyes and she knew what he intended right at that moment. Mia licked her lips as she took her foot off of the wall and thus straddled his face: her face on the other hand hung over his dick, which lay exposed between his legs, the skin smooth, dry, and delicate, and the whole shaft itself looking a little bit full. She stroked his shaft with her index and middle fingers.  
She felt his teeth brush against the inside of her thigh and on the edge of the hole of her underwear. He yanked down to bring them part of the way off of her hips. There was a brief pause, then he yanked back again, followed by another pause, and then another yank down her hips, until her lips were exposed for him. The tip of his tongue slithered into her, and the short scraggly hair on his face brushed against the inside of her thighs, which tickled her a bit.  
Mia wrapped her lips around his tip and suckled on his tip like she would a lollipop, and then moved her head further down to bring the tip deeper into her mouth. Lars' tongue caressed the delicate tissues on the inside of her lips, before moving onto that minute bundle of nerves on the inside. The hair on his chin scratched against her thighs: the two sensations in conjunction made her heart thunder inside of her chest. She wiggled her toes inside of her boots as he licked that spot again and again, and his incoming hair rubbed onto her; she brought his tip even further into her mouth and suckled harder.  
Every caress of the tip of his tongue tickled her, which only made her more wet for him.  
Mia pinched her eyes shut as she ran her tongue over the silky side of his shaft and tasted the sweet flavor of his skin. So tasty, like a sweet baguette straight out of the oven. His chest heaved even harder underneath her hips; he was going to shoot another load at any given second. But she kept at it; her hands wandered down from his thighs to those deposits of soft skin over his hips. It was a bit awkward given she lay upside down over him, but she pulsated her fingers for a light squeeze on him.  
She started to gag on his tip, and she lifted up her head with her mouth gaping wide open. At the same time, Lars lapped his tongue out from the inside of her and gasped. She let go of his hips and rolled off of him onto her back. He lay on his elbows next to her on the mattress, panting and licking his lips. She lay on her back next to him, also panting and eyeing the side of his face and his full cheeks.  
“Fuck—” she breathed out. “—fuck—where'd you learn to sixty nine like that?”  
Lars let out a soft groan before he rolled his head over to see her. “You wanna know the truth?”  
“Yes.”  
He burped in his throat and then brought a hand to his chest.  
“Kirk.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. He and I have actually made out before, and he showed me how to work like a little dog. The little dog that I am—”  
Her eyes widened at that. She remembered Kirk had organized a party with Marcia and Sonia, and she could imagine what they must be doing right at that moment. They had drinks and food up there. The thought of it made her heart pound even harder inside of her chest.  
“Oh—” she gasped. “Oh, mio Dios, that's too fucking HOT!”  
She scrambled into an upright position, with the shabby bed frame making another creaking sound all the while, and she held his face in her hands yet again.  
“You need more cake,” she whispered, stroking the pad of her thumb on the rough hair on his face. “More slices of cake.”  
“Please—” he begged. “Dinner, too. Fill me up. Fill my belly so full and then you can have your way with me.”  
“Of course. What would you like?”  
“One of your Puerto Rican dishes. With lots of rice and pork and spices.”  
She took a glimpse up at the ceiling for a moment.  
“Arroz con gandules,” she suggested, her lips curling up into a devious smile. “I have all of the ingredients to make it, too.”  
“Ooh, thank you.”  
“And I will be dining with you, too, papacito,” she whispered, kissing his lips and feeling the muscles in the backs of her legs stretching from sitting in such a tight upright position. He eyed her with a glimmer in his eye.  
“I love how you are not afraid to hold my round face.”  
“Of course I am not afraid. I could hold your round face forever.”  
He licked his bottom lip and glanced off to the side for a second before speaking again.  
“When I was a kid, in Danish school, the other children would make fun of my round face, like they would call me girlish or effeminate, or they would call me fat, and so it—it kind of—scarred me, internally. Every time I look at my reflection in the mirror, I see a fat man with like—like five chins.”  
Mia stroked the side of his face before giving him another kiss.  
“All the more reason to take care of you and your beautiful body,” she whispered. “You are soft and sweet, and you need to be loved. And I have found it, I have the love inside of you in the form of your stomach and your body. So I will make you dinner.” She gave him another kiss, this time a bit longer of a kiss to take in the soft cherry red skin and the taste of both frostings resting on the inside of his lips. She dropped her hands to his chest and then his belly. Her fingers crept over the downy plumes of hair running down the slight curvature of his belly towards his navel, and she thus started moving her hands around to give him a gentle rub. He smiled at the feeling, and his cheek bones filled out and returned to their rosy blush.  
“We're just getting started, too, so dominate me, my lovely darling,” his words crept out of his mouth in a series of croaks, “dominate me and love me all night until Christmas morning.”


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "So I'm just kicking it I'm counting the days  
> I hardly can wait, for us to hang out  
> I'm really missing it in so many ways  
> I anticipate us making out."  
> -"Making Out", No Doubt

“I should also tell you—before I stuff my ass silly and totally forget to tell you about it—this is quite the, interesting house you live in here.”  
Lars was seated at the kitchen table right before the two tier birthday cake, and kept his right elbow upon the edge of the table, and watched Mia cook the peas, the rice, and the sofrito for the arroz con gandules. He leaned back inside of the chair with his jeans unbuttoned and the bottom hem of his shirt hugging his waist; every so often she peered back at him and he tossed his hair back with a flick of his head.  
“I moved into this house not long ago,” she told him as she stirred the wooden spoon in the sauce pan of sofrito: a warm aromatic blanket of culantro, cilantro, bell peppers, pimientos, onions, garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, fresh ground salt, black pepper corns, and pan fried pork covered every corner of the tiny kitchen.  
“And that's quite the large bed you have in your bedroom,” he added, lifting up his shirt to look at his flesh.  
“I have always loved sleeping in a big bed. Lots of room.”  
“Oh, I see how you are.” She flicked her head back to see the playful smirk on his face; she glanced down at the bottom hem of his shirt, which he had pulled up about four inches over the hem of his underwear, and he had spread his fingers out over his bare belly. She giggled at him.  
“What are you doing?”  
“Feeling myself.”  
“Feeling yourself?”  
“Playing with myself, too.”  
She chuckled at that.  
“Yeah. I'm feeling myself and also playing with myself. See? Putting my fingers into my belly button and feeling how soft my skin is—no wonder why you can't hardly keep your hands to yourself and why you like touching me so much.”  
She giggled again as she returned to the saucepan to give the sofrito a few more stirs before adding it to the yellow rice and the peas in the neighboring pot.  
“Tu ternura me encanta,” she told him as she lifted the wooden spoon to taste the sofrito; she blew on the head of the spoon a few times and then took a sip. Perfect, with just the right balance of culantro and cilantro embedded within.  
“Come again?” he asked, never taking his hands off of his skin; she picked up the two oven mits over the back of the stage.  
“I love your softness after all,” she translated as she gingerly tipped the edge of the saucepan over the yellow rice and the peas, and poured the sofrito inside; she held onto the handle on the side of the pot of rice to make sure the sauce never splashed back onto her. “Your softness, literally speaking and also from your love of being touched.”  
“Speak for yourself, skat,” he told her, clearing his throat. “Because the only soft one I see here is you.”  
She glanced up at the wall before her and smiled to herself; she set down the saucepan on the burner and switched off the flame to tend to the pot before her.  
“Oh, God, it smells absolutely incredible in here.” Lars shifted his weight in the chair, and Mia knew he was getting hungry again. She stirred the pot with the same wooden spoon and took in every whiff of cilantro over pan fried pork and stewed onion. She thought about the party at Marcia and Sonia's house and how that was faring for all of them. But on the other hand, she was more than happy to spend the next few evenings alone with Lars. She lifted up a few grains of rice, which she found out where tender and right on the spot.  
“Okay, papacito, it's ready,” she told him in a light airy voice, switching off the flame.  
“Oh—!”  
Mia picked a plate from the cupboard overhead and served up a good sized helping from the pot; she then turned around and set the plate down on the table before him. He closed his eyes and bowed his head for a whiff of his dinner, and a relaxed smile crossed over his round full face; she handed him a fork and thus proceeded to serve herself. Once she had her dish and a fork in hand, she took her seat at the table next to him, where he awaited her. She noticed he still had left his pants unbuttoned and his shirt still lifted a bit to show his belly button and the skin on his waist.  
“So what happens if I eat this whole thing right here, right now, right in front of you?” he asked; she peered at the sly grin appearing out from his warm smile.  
“We will have to wait and see, baby.” She flashed him a light wink.  
“Does it involve—massaging a certain delicate part of my body?”  
“Mayyybe.”  
“Does it involve feeding me another slice of this lovely cake in front of us here?”  
She shrugged and showed him a little smirk. He squinted his eyes at her.  
“Does it include—you pushing my belly button again as if it were an actual button and giving me kisses there?”  
“Perhaps. I might let you do it to me, too.”  
The smirk disappeared from his face and he raised his eyebrows at her.  
“You, too?”  
“Yes. There's a little more sugar you missed on my—my toy box, too, I can feel it.”  
He licked his lips as he picked up his fork.  
“So if I eat this—all of this right in front of me—I can run my tongue on your cunt again?”  
“Maybe. Only if you finish your dinner first.”  
The tip of his tongue ran over the edges of his teeth and then he dove down into the plate of rice, peas, pork, and sofrito, wolfing it all down as if he was starving to death.  
“Get in my belly—get in my belly—oh, Lord, this is delicious—”  
He took another bite of rice and closed his eyes so as to milk all of the spicy, earthy flavor out of the rice.  
“Get. In. My. Belly,” he repeated, setting his free hand on his stomach. Mia rested her chin on her hand as she took another bite for herself and watched him lean back inside of his chair once more. He bowed his head and put his arms around his belly as if giving himself a hug.  
“You are such a fascinating boy,” she remarked. “You love to eat and feel warm and lush all over, and yet, you find your own reflection repulsive.”  
Lars lifted his head just enough to show her the coy expression upon his face. He swallowed the bite of rice before speaking again.  
“I always thought that if I eat my own heart out, I'd get fat to match up to the round shape of my face. My drumming will undoubtedly fall off a cliff after that, but—oh, well.”  
“But—first of all, you would make a very sexy and very sweet fat man, though—” She examined his arms, wrapped around his middle like the arms of a strait jacket; she pictured him with thirty extra pounds and sighed through her nose at the thought. “—and you have such a beautiful body, too. Perfect for that weight we made a deal on.”  
He kept himself in an embrace for another minute and then let his forearms slide down his belly, which in turn pushed down the hem of his shirt before sliding down over his hips. She kept her eyes fixated on that slight curvature emerging from underneath his shirt.  
“Such a beautiful, alluring body,” she lowered her voice to a delicate whisper; she thought of giving him kisses all along that soft curve, and felt her face grow warm. She raised her right hand to touch the soft skin under his chin, and then leaned over to kiss the scruff upon his face, a sweet little kiss which in turn caused a warm pinkish blush to cross his cheek bones.  
“And such a beautiful, alluring boy,” she continued, giving him another kiss before returning to her plate. Lars touched the spot where she kissed him with the tips of his fingers before the pink color cooled down and he picked up his fork again. He glanced behind him to the entrance of the kitchen before returning to his plate. He took in about four more bites, two of which he ate while keeping his eyes closed.  
“Can I confess something to you?” he asked her in a gentle voice.  
“Of course, papacito.” His lips curled up at the corners a bit to show her a small smile at the sound of her pet name for him. “You can confess anything to me.”  
He cleared his throat, and then kept his fork near the edge of his plate.  
“And, Mia, darling, I want you to know,” he started, picking up another fork full of rice, peas, bell peppers, and pieces of pork, “that this is not in any way second thoughts. No, if anything, I feel you and I are a torrid, ardent match and I can feel us getting closer and closer with every bite of food I put in my mouth. I mean, I will admit I was unsure at first when we went out to lunch together the first time, but something told me you were good company, though. It wasn't until you came to our show that night when I knew I could come close to you and you were willing to do the same for me. And that day you were in the hospital, I was actually afraid. Neither of us had the right words to say to Cliff before he was killed, and so I wanted to make up for it—you know, because of the prospect of losing you. And now that you asked me about it, I told you and now—the cat is out of the bag, as they say here in America. And I meant it, and I still do mean it. So—do not take this as second thoughts on my part whatsoever.”  
“Okay.”  
“I'm getting this—weird presence in this house. I'm not sure how to describe it, but there's this over hanging feeling of—I wanna say 'dread' in this house.”  
“Dread?”  
“Yeah. Like—you shouldn't be in this house. You should be in one of those cute little apartments on the northern side of town, up by the Rose Quarter.”  
She smirked at him. “Why, you wanna have a little place where we can have a separate room just for feeding each other cakes and sweets from our countries?”  
He gaped at her.  
“YES!” His voice broke into a tiny squeak which echoed over the walls of the kitchen. He brought a hand to his mouth and the pink color returned to his cheek bones. She giggled at that and the subsequent widening of his eyes like a puppy dog.  
“Did—that—just come out of me?” he sputtered.  
“It did!”  
“Well, I guess that's not the first time high toned drivel flooded out of my mouth.” Right at that moment, Mia flashed back on the second ride home from Seattle and her thoughts about Astoria, over looking the coast while perched over the mouth of the Columbia River.  
“Lars, do you know where Astoria is?”  
“Astoria? Can't say I do.”  
“It's at the mouth of the Columbia—like we could follow the road along the river and it takes us to Astoria. It's this cute little town full of fir trees and bright colored houses—”  
“Oh, so it's like—er—Oregon's response to Copenhagen?”  
“Mmm, sort of. Except there are plenty of places to hike throughout the place, and then there's the Astoria Column—it's also not far from Haystack Rock over on Cannon Beach.”  
“Hmm, I see. We can camp out and make love under the stars. You wanna go there?”  
“I thought of it upon coming home from Bainbridge Island. Perhaps when the weather starts warming up. You know, we can go there in… March, maybe? It's after the winter washes and before the unpredictable spring rains. It'll be just you and me.”  
“March—” He peered up at the ceiling in thought. “I'm just trying to think of when we go on tour again. Like mid March, I think? I'll have to ask James when we see him again—the beach, too.”  
“The beach. You can be a merman.”  
“A Danish merman with a plump little potbelly, sounds lovely!” He showed her a playful smirk when there was a knock on the front door and they both froze in place. Mia's first thought was Wayne had returned home for something and she started thinking of how to hide Lars and her thigh high boots in the house.  
“Would you like me to get that?” he offered to her.  
“Oh, no, I got it,” she assured him, climbing to her feet and thus shuffling out of the kitchen into the hallway. She peeked through the peephole in the door and recognized a head of fiery red hair over a pale face and a black overcoat.  
“It's Dave!” she called down the hall. She flung open the door and a rush of cold air sent a wave of goose pimples over her skin. The corners of his eyes crinkled with the welcoming smile and also from the cold night.  
“Hi,” she greeted him, keeping her legs behind the door.  
“Hi,” he returned the favor with a crooked smile.  
“What's up?”  
“Just came to check up on you guys, since you're both down here by yourselves. I also have a little Christmas and birthday gift for Lars—” He sniffled the air behind her. “—what is that? It smells fantastic.”  
“Arroz con gandules,” she replied, “rice, sofrito, and pork. I made it for dinner.”  
“Lars is lucky man—anyways, these are the things I have for him, there's two. These are from my mom and me.”  
He reached into his pocket and held out his hand: resting in his square palm was a silvery pendant hanging off of a black chain; the pendant itself was in the shape of a guitar pick with “Deep Purple” engraved on the front, and a narrow red pocket knife capped on either end with silver.  
“A pendant and a pocket knife?” She raised an eyebrow at him.  
“Deep Purple's his favorite band and I think everybody needs a Swiss Army knife. Take 'em and give them to him for me, pretty please.”  
“Why don't you come inside?”  
“Oh, you know I would love to and have a plate of dinner with you two, but—I'm also picking up dinner for the party on the other side of town. I thought I'd swing by.”  
“Okay. Thank you, Dave—” She took the pendant and the knife out of his hand, and Dave leaned forward to embrace her. The outside of his coat sent even more goose pimples over her skin as she put her arms around his chest. He lifted his head and gazed down at her thigh high boots.  
“Wow,” he remarked.  
“Custom made,” she told me, patting on the side of the one on the left with her free hand. He chuckled and shook his head.  
“Lars is a lucky man—anyway, I'll catch you later, honey—” He turned away from the door step.  
“Good night, Dave,” she called out before closing the door behind her. She clutched the pocket knife in her right hand, but held onto the pendant with her left index finger and thumb, all while she sashayed back down the hall to the kitchen, with those high heels padding over the floor all the while. She stopped in the entrance of the kitchen, and Lars turned his head to face her: she could see he had already eaten about half of that helping. At some point, when she wasn't in the room, he had poured himself a small glass of the whole milk in the refrigerator.  
“What did our friendly neighborhood redheaded guitarist want?” he asked her as he set down his glass of milk and ran his tongue over his upper lip. From that side of the room, she noticed his lips were a bright fiery red from the combination of the yellow rice, the pepper, and the onions. She licked her lips and made her hips sway with each and every step as she strode towards him; she took her seat next to him and showed him the pocket knife and the pendant. He gasped at the sight of both and gaped at her.  
“Are—Are those for me?”  
“They are. From Dave and his mother, too.”  
Lars picked the pendant out from her fingers and wrapped the black chain around his neck. He turned the clasp around so he could fasten it there, and then adjusted it so to show her the face of the pendant. He took the pocket knife and lifted the main silver blade, followed by the cork screw, before stuffing it into his pocket. She touched the pendant to feel the smoothness of the metal and the edges making up the engraving there on the front; she then lay it back down upon his chest, which she followed with a light, loving pat.  
“Feliz navidad, papacito,” she whispered into his face. “—y feliz cumpleanos.” He licked his lips, and she could smell the faint touch of cilantro on his breath.  
“Oh, darling—I'm trying so hard right now,” he breathed back to her.  
“So hard to do what?”  
“To be this close to you and resisting the need to kiss you.” She gathered herself and tossed back her hair.  
“Keep eating,” she encouraged him, picking up her fork once again, “keep going. And I will keep going myself. We will have fun. I promise.”  
Both she and Lars had eaten two helpings, but she convinced him to eat another large spoonful of rice before he washed it down with the glass of milk and she took the plates, rinsed them off, and set them in the basin of the sink. At that point, she plopped back down in her seat and sighed with that warm feeling inside of her stomach relaxing her whole body. She thought of taking off her boots but knew she had to keep her promise to him. Meanwhile, he leaned back inside of the chair and lifted his shirt to show her his belly, and the pale skin stretched as far as it could go at that moment, all round and full.  
“Oh—Oh, man—oh—ooh—I really overdid it this time—”  
Mia showed him a sweet smile and inched her chair closer to him. She lay her hand on the lower part of his belly and began caressing him. The tips of her fingers ran over the softest skin around his waist and into his belly button, before moving onto the plush little love handles coming in over his hips. Her fingers glided back to his belly and she stroked them around in light little circles right over his stomach.  
“—oh—ohhhh, I think I ate too much. That was—really—filling and—mmm—rich, too.”  
She kissed the side of his neck, right over the black chain.  
“You did well,” she told him. He knitted his eyebrows together at her.  
“I don't know, darling,” he insisted, “I—mmm, oh—pardon me—I'm just trying to—to—”  
He didn't finish because she lifted her hand and held onto the side of his face so as to kiss his lips once, twice, four times, five times, six times: each time the fine fuzz on his upper lip brushed against her mouth. She gazed into his green eyes.  
“Stop,” she purred. “I want you.”  
He raised his eyebrows at her as she wrapped her arms around his thickening waist.  
“Oh—” he said in a broken whisper. She let go of his waist so as to slip her left leg over his thighs; she then leaned her back against the edge of the table for a moment before she brought her head closer to him.  
“I will be gentle,” she whispered to him. “So gentle—”  
She pressed her lips onto his twice before she closed her eyes and let her tongue into his mouth. Her hands remained on his very full belly to feel the warmth radiating from his skin; her little fantasy back in the salon was coming true, with the feeling of his soft flesh in her hands and the hair on his face brushing against her lips. She felt his hands hold onto her butt to bring her closer to him.  
“This is how you digest all that food, baby boy,” she whispered into his face.  
“Åh, hvor sød er det, skat,” he whispered back to her before she gave him another passionate kiss.


	40. Chapter 40

When Mia turned around to pick a small handful of cake out from the side sliced open, and even though she was seated upon his lap, Lars slid out from underneath her, and climbed out of the chair and crawled on his hands and knees to the edge of the hallway. She caught herself on the edge of the table and gathered herself. She stood up, and stepped over him to beat him to the doorway, and thus loomed over his head. He lay himself onto his side, while still keeping the bottom of his shirt pulled up towards his chest. She pressed her hands to her hips.  
“Where do you think you're going, big boy?” she demanded with a playful grin upon her face.  
“I—I need to—I need to lie down a while,” he pleaded, rolling onto his back. “I can't—I can't hardly move—”  
“Would you like some help into the living room?”  
“Oh—every bit that you can give me.”  
She giggled and crouched down over the crown of his head right as he shut his eyes. She petted the top of his bangs with the tips of her fingers, before moving her hands to the sides of his face: she considered kneeling down on the floor to kiss him on the forehead, but her ankles already began to ache with soreness from the high stiletto heels.  
“Come on, baby,” she coaxed him in a gentle voice. “I've got you.”  
He groaned inside of his throat. She wet her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue, and then she slid her hands underneath his shoulders. It was a difficult task to pull off with the edges of her boots rubbing against her thighs and the full feeling inside of her stomach, but she managed to lift his head and shoulders off of the floor.  
“Come on—” she grunted as she dragged him about an inch over the linoleum. “Come on—Lars—papacito—baby boy—come on, help me out here—I'm in heels—!”  
“Oh—darling—I'm not—mmm, pardon me—I'm not that heavy—” He shuffled his feet to try and gather himself, all while she still held onto him.  
“But I am in heels,” she insisted in a hushed voice into his ear as she squatted down to lift him off the floor. “And I am full, too.”  
His foot slipped and he landed on the seat of his jeans with a low thump! which in turn shook the floor a bit.  
“'Not that heavy,' are you sure?” she asked, still in a hushed voice into his ear. He groaned and struggled to lift himself onto his feet; she kept her hand upon his shoulder as he stood upright with his legs quivering at the knees like a baby horse. His chest heaved as he clasped a hand to his belly. He started panting more and more, and he blinked several times as if he was about to faint.  
“Oh—shit—”  
“What's wrong?”  
“I think I—mmm—stood up too fast—ugh—and I'm—” A soft giggle which sounded like tinkling wine glasses escaped his mouth. “—I feel like a—like a—like a—” A loud belch escaped his lips and he clasped his hands to his mouth right then; she burst out laughing but never let go of him. “—oof, pardon me, a turkey—”  
“Okay, come with me…”  
She kept her arm around him and held him close to her as she led him out of the kitchen and into the living room. He leaned the side of his head against her shoulder and shuffled his feet all the way over the carpet. She guided him to the couch and then, very careful not to hurt him, eased him down on the cushions with his head on the arm closest to the doorway. Once he lay his back over the cushions, he lifted his legs and stretched out there on the couch.  
“Oh, thank you, darling,” he moaned out as he rested his hands atop his belly.  
“And thank you for helping me,” she answered, taking a seat in the recliner across from him. She clicked on the lamp on the table next to her and he squinted his eyes at the sudden bright light bathing every corner of the room.  
“What are you doing?”  
“Me? I'm taking these boots off.” She unfastened the buckle on the right one and the protective leather loosened up. She let out a loud sigh of relief.  
“Were—Were—Were they—mmm, hurting you?”  
“Just after a long time,” she assured him, sliding the boot off of her leg and in turn wiggling her toes.  
“Oh, I see. They—They are—They are—They are stilettos—”  
“They are stiletto heels after all. Other than that, they are very comfortable.” No sooner had she unbuckled the other one and slid it off of her leg when the phone rang. She lifted a finger to him and ambled back into the kitchen to answer the one on the wall; the heels of her feet seemed to sink down into the floor with each and every step back.  
She picked the receiver off of the wall and brought it to her ear.  
“Hello?”  
“Mia?” a woman's voice answered.  
“Yes?”  
“It's Mike.”  
“Oh, hi! How goes it?”  
“I hate to tell you this right now, given Christmas is so close,” started Mikayla, her voice breaking, “but Trent and I just broke up.”  
“Aw, really? What happened?”  
“I don't know. We were fine this morning and then around lunch time, we got into a big argument—I don't even remember what it was about now—and then he stormed out. When we both calmed down, we started talking and—we both realized we're incompatible. And I told him we're through. We're still on good terms, and he still wants all you kids to come up here for Sub Pop's first concert in January, but—I don't really want to be around him right now. I obviously already told Marcia and Sonia.”  
“Oh, that's okay. I'll tell Lars about it.”  
“How's he, by the way?”  
“We just had dinner. He had more than plenty to eat because he's all sleepy and lovey dovey now. I'm just going to lay with him on the couch and be all soft and sweet with him.”  
“Dinner at the house?” Mikayla cleared her throat.  
“Yeah. We might go out tomorrow. You know, it being Christmas Eve and all and it's just the two of us, but—we'll see.”  
“Did you—have a little fun with those boots you bought at that leather place?”  
“Did we ever! I don't really want to go into it but he came over earlier and we sixty nined in the bedroom.”  
“Ohhh, I always loved doing sixty nine with a couple of my former clients. Mr. Bennett never wanted to eat me out, though, so I always did it solo. When you're on the couch, give him a hand if you feel like it.”  
“He made me choke him, too.”  
There was a brief pause on Mikayla's end before she spoke up again.  
“Choke him? Like, asphyxiation?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Phew, be careful with that. I've done that before and the poor bastard freaked out because he couldn't breathe. It does wonders if done right.”  
“He also performs really well after he's eaten a lot.”  
“Like—musically?”  
“Yeah. We've also done it, too. And it's just—it's wonderful. He gives himself to me and I have lots of fun with him and he has fun with me.”  
“Huh. So it's almost like eating a ton of food makes him primeval, and visceral, and open to you. Never met anyone quite like that, and I've slept with many men before.” Mikayla fetched up a sigh. “Well, baby girl, I'm gonna let you go now. I just wanted to tell you about Trent and me, and I wanted to check in on you and Lars—do either of you know about James and Ashley at all?”  
“Other than they're together? Not really. Ashley and Sonia have been busy with school and I've been working hard, so we haven't had much time to speak to one another since Thanksgiving.”  
“May I suggest a double date while you and Lars are with each other at the house right now. Like—on Christmas night.”  
“Okay! I'll bring that up to him.”  
“Alright, baby girl. Have a good night. Don't stay up too late and take care of that cute boy.”  
“You, too, Mike.”  
And with that, they both hung up the phone at the same time, and Mia wheeled around and returned to the living room to snuggle up next to Lars on the couch. He rubbed his eyes and peered up at her from the arm of the couch: his lips were parted by a hair, the soft color had returned to his face, and his light feathery bangs spread out over his broad forehead; the slight double under his chin swelled out as he swallowed, and the sight of hair on his face only brought out her need to kiss him even more. His eyelids drooped which in turn softened his face even more. He never lifted his hands from the middle of his torso as she hoisted her left knee in the space between his hip and the back of the couch.  
“Who—Who was that?” he breathed out.  
“Mikayla,” she answered, lifting herself towards the back of the couch; “she and Trent just broke up.”  
“Aw, that—that blows.”  
“I know. She said they got into a big argument, and then when things cooled off—” He inched over a bit to let her lay down on her side in between the back of the couch and his body. “—they started talking, and they just broke it off. He wants us to come up to Seattle in January for a big concert.”  
“Oh?”  
“Yeah. She doesn't know about herself, but—you know—”  
Mia nestled her head against Lars' shoulder: she kept her nose near his soft round chin and lay her hand over his hands. He swallowed again, with the skin under his jaw looking so soft and full. He closed his eyes and she gazed on at the side profile of his face which resembled a half moon, before giving him a light kiss right there on the skin underneath his chin, and feeling the rough, bristling tops of the hair growing on his face.  
“So rugged, and yet so smooth as silk,” she whispered into his ear and returning her hand to the backs of his hands.  
“As—milk?” he stammered in a broken voice.  
“No, you silly, hairy little man,” she chuckled into his ear. She held onto the other side of his face and kissed him under the chin once more when a low rumble emerged from his stomach. They both glanced down at his hands accompanied with her hand, all three of which rested over his bloated belly; he slid his down towards his waist while she kept hers right over the spot of his stomach.  
“Was that you?”  
“That was. That's how—how you—mmm, you know I'm full.”  
“Stick a fork in you?”  
“Stick a couple of—er—mmm, forks in me, honey pie.” He rolled his head over to face her with his eyelids still drooping and struggling to stay open. “I am tender and all for you.”  
She gazed into his eyes for a second before giving him a sweet little kiss on the lips: the hair on his upper lip tickled her a bit.  
“I love it when you get all stuffed full like this—” she whispered into his face.  
“I turn into—mmm, an actual danish,” he pointed out; she giggled before kissing him again. “All warm and—tasty—and full of flavor, ready to dance upon your tongue—”  
Mia giggled yet again before returning her hand to his face for yet another kiss; this time, she added the tip of her tongue towards the front of his teeth. His stomach made another quiet rumble but neither of them minded. He let go of her mouth and stared into her eyes.  
“Remember that night when you called me? And—” He burped again in his throat. “—you told me you wanted to cuddle with me and watch cartoons?”  
“Of course.” She raised her head to spot the television in the far corner of the room before the recliner. “Why, you want to watch cartoons?”  
“Only if you wanna.”  
“I don't know where the remote is, though. And I don't want to get up, either, and we're also facing the wrong way. Oh, and before I forget, Mikayla suggested you and I go out on a double date with James and Ashley while you're up here.”  
“Oh, I would love to. I don't—I don't know where we would go, but I am sure they would love that. And it's a shame you don't want to get up, either, because I—I would love another slice of cake. Or another one of those macarons.”  
“Oh, I see, you made a little room in there.”  
“If you say so.” He showed her a little smirk.  
“You are going to love it when Marcia, Sandra, and I do the baking competition this spring.”  
“Lots of tasting, methinks?”  
“Oh, yes, papacito.” She kissed his lips again, and moved her hand in circles over his belly. “All of those sweet, lush feelings inside of you with each and every bite you take.” She kissed him harder that time.  
“Talking about a danish—and thinking about those raspberry danishes at Smell the Magic, I kind of want to—give you a little raspberry on your belly.”  
He raised his eyebrows at her.  
“Wait 'til I get bigger, skat,” he encouraged her. “Wait until—I get a little bit rounder for you and then give me all the raspberries you can think of. Also—you and I mustn't think when we are together, either. Feel. Feel me. Feel the warmth from my belly and the—the hammering inside my chest and—my beard against your lips. Feel me. Feel every part of me. Feel every millimeter of me as you would yourself.”  
“Every millimeter or every inch?”  
“Both.”  
She kissed him yet again, this time with a soft groan inside of her throat, and gave his belly another light rub before showing him a sweet little smile.  
“Another piece of cake?” she offered, lifting the hem of his shirt and running the tip of her finger around the rim of his belly button.  
“Not yet, darling. I just wanna lay here for a moment. This is a really comfy couch, by the way.”  
“Isn't it? I love taking naps here. Also—would you like a hand?”  
“A hand? A hand. A—oh. Oh, I see. Mmm, maybe after another slice of cake.”  
“You just want to lay here and—feel me.”  
“Feel me as I would feel you.” She gave him another kiss, but this time she missed his lips and caressed the side of his face instead: the tips of the hair brushed against her lips and thus stirred up that tingling sensation between her legs. She kissed him there again, and felt herself growing damp with every kiss. He showed her a playful little smirk.  
“Yeah, you like this little beard I'm growing here, don't you?”  
“Oh, yes, baby—mmm—”  
“Kiss me again—and kiss me some more—yes—oh, yes, darling—honey pie—I think—I think, no, I feel—I feel for another slice of cake.”  
“Okay, baby—only if I get to have a bite.”  
“Of course, my love, of course. It wouldn't be fair—it wouldn't be fair—if I ate that big whole focking cake all for myself—yes, that's it—ooh, yeah, right on the neck, yeah—right on the neck! Ah, you do that like a pro… ah! Oh—oh, yes…"


	41. Chapter 41

Some time around eleven o'clock, and after a second large slice of cake, Mia and Lars curled up into bed together under the soft blankets. It had been the first time she had crawled into bed and knew she would wake in the morning feeling good. He had taken off his shirt and lay down onto his back by the time he switched off the lamp and she spread the blankets over his body. She kept on her side as she nestled up next to him; the mattress creaked under their weight, a light gentle creak. He rolled his head over the surface of the fluffy pillow so as to face up to the ceiling. She slid her hand underneath the covers to feel his bare skin.  
“Feeling full?” she asked him in a sweet voice.  
“Mmm… very much so. God, I ate so much cake—”  
“Yeah, you were quite the little piglet this evening. But you're all so cute and soft, though—”  
Mia wrapped her arm around his body and then placed her hand on the side of his ribs.  
“Good night, my baby boy,” she whispered into his face before giving him a light kiss under the chin, and then another one next to his mouth, and thus feeling the bristle of the hair on his face against her lips. “Sweet baby boy—”  
She gave him another kiss on the neck before she raked the tips of her fingers along the curvature of his chest. He shuffled his head about on the pillow and smacked his lips; Mia kept her head nestled up next to the side of his neck to take in the soft musk emerging from his skin. She slid her fingers down onto his belly, and snuggled even closer to him, and closed her eyes. He sighed through his nose as he shuffled his head about on the pillow.  
“This is a weird bed,” he remarked in a low voice.  
“It is,” she answered, keeping her eyes closed. “It—really is—” Her voice trailed off as she fell asleep next to him. She had a dream but she could not recall it once she woke up to gray light filtering through the bedroom window and into the otherwise pitch dark room. At some point during the night, Lars had rolled over onto his side so she awoke to the back of his head and the streaky waves of rather dark hair cascading from underneath his top layers of brown hair. Mia had never taken her hands off of his waist, so she felt something soft and plush, something thickening when she shifted her hands about and then pulsated her fingers.  
He groaned inside of his throat at the feel of her fingers on his flesh. She couldn't resist the smile creeping over her face.  
“What is—” She cleared her throat. “—what is this? What is this right here?”  
She let her hands creep around his waist and the slight pillow forming on his belly; she kissed his neck and took a sniff of his hair. He stirred again but never woke up. She gave him a light loving pat which she then followed with a gentle rub.  
“Papacito,” she whispered into his ear, “papacito rico—mi amor—estas despierto?”  
He groaned inside of his throat and shifted his weight.  
“Jeg—” he breathed out.  
“Que?”  
“Jeg—Jeg—Jeg kan ikke—trække vejret—”  
“Que?”  
“I—I can't breathe, darling,” he grunted out. She loosened her grip on his waist and he shifted his weight once more; she pushed herself back over the mattress so he could roll over onto his back. The blankets slid down from his shoulders to the middle of his chest; his eyelids fluttered open and he lifted his head to see the hem of the blankets. As he pulled them back up to his neck, he peered down at his body and the slight tummy rising up from his middle. He raised his eyebrows at the sight.  
“Ah—ooh—oh, hello there—” He rolled his head over the pillow to face her. “Like what you see here?”  
“I do,” she replied, rolling back over onto her side to stroke his chest. “Very much so. It's a cute look for you.”  
He reached down with his left hand to feel himself.  
“I am all soft, too, so it is not just 'cause I'm full of shit,” he croaked out, laying his head back down on the pillow, “shit and piss and vinegar—”  
He stared up at the ceiling for a moment before speaking up again.  
“I really mean that, too,” he confessed, lifting himself into an upright position for a second before he hurried into the bathroom. Mia lay there, part of the way on her back, with her hand beneath the blankets on the other side of the bed so as to feel the warmth he left behind there. She watched him slip behind the door before she pulsed her fingers again to imitate feeling his body on the bedsheet.  
Wayne had left her mind right at that moment. She closed her eyes as she returned onto her back, and licked her lips. She didn't want to leave the bed to feed him and herself anymore food. She wanted him to come back to bed so to feel him some more.  
A few minutes went by when his broken voice sliced through the silence around her.  
“Whose pants are these?”  
Her eyes shot open and she lifted her head to see him next to the closet door, which hung ajar enough for him to have stooped over inside to pick up the large pair of faded blue jeans with a white bleach stain on the right thigh. The waist band was large enough for him to fit inside of it twice. He knitted his eyebrows together and ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip when she made eye contact with him. Mia reclined on her elbows and flicked her head back.  
“Really, whose pants are these?” he repeated.  
“I—I don't know,” she stammered, knowing full well they were Wayne's pants and he had forgotten to take them with him down to California. He held them out before his face before pressing the waist band against his lower belly.  
“God, these are freaking huge. Holy shit.” He chuckled at the sight of them right against him. “Holy shit! These are like giant's jeans! Jesus Christ, the four of us—James, Kirk, Jason, and I—the four of us all could fit in here! We'd still probably have room for you and Ashley, too!”  
She grinned at the sight of him holding the waist band up to his body.  
“Put them on,” she coaxed him.  
“Put them on?”  
“Yeah! Put them on!”  
Lars held them out from his body so as to slip his legs inside; since they dwarved him, he bunched the waist band over his left hip. Mia sat up all the way to see that the bottom hems of the jeans gathered around his feet so much that his toes barely poked out from underneath them.  
“Very cute,” she remarked. He tossed his head back before pressing his free hand onto his hip and she giggled at him.  
“Very, very, very cute. It's even more so with your stomach poking out a little bit.”  
“Ah, so it's not just my eyes and my hand messing with me. I really did go a tiny bit soft overnight.”  
“Yeah, you did. See? You're getting a sweet round little curve around your belly button—and I see it coming in all around your waist. I see your love handles are getting a little bit fuller, too. It's really cute—rather sexy, actually.”  
He licked his lips, but this time she had no clue if it was out of true thirst or from arousal. He tugged on the waist band over his hip so it clung to him better.  
“What if I did this? Tightened them up around my gut like this?”  
Mia examined the soft bump of extra flesh forming around his waist, accentuated by the clean faded denim; the way the waist band clung to his hips made him appear softer but also more masculine. She twirled a strand of hair around her index finger.  
“Tighter,” she suggested.  
He tugged a bit more on the waist band so the fabric pressed harder against his hips and thus his flesh poked out a bit more.  
“Tighter,” she repeated. He slid his left hand behind his back so as to emphasize his body and use both hands to tighten it even more. She rested both of her elbows on her knees and then rested her chin in her left hand. He stretched the denim as far as he could make it around his waist, but it was enough to accentuate that new little roll over his hips.  
“Mmm, I wanna eat that muffin top right up,” she said in a light voice. He raised an eyebrow at her.  
“Eat it up?”  
“Oh, yes. Looks quite yummy.”  
“Well—give it time, darling. Give me a bunch of actual muffins and I will give you one in return.”  
She lifted her head from her hand to better examine her lover wearing her husband's jeans, at the bottom hems bunched around his ankles and his feet, at the massive stretches of denim hanging all around his sleek thighs, and the waist band snug around his hips to make his belly and his love handles poke out. Mia nibbled on her bottom lip as her eyes wandered up to his chest and then his head, from the stubble on his face to the bangs over his eyes and dark eyebrows.  
“You look like you are about to seduce me,” she noted, eyeing the tiny stretch mark next to his belly button. “Big boy.”  
“I just might, darling,” he told her in a low voice. “Jeg kan bare forføre dig, min sexet pige.” She leaned back onto her hands to show off her body.  
“Vuelve a la cama, papacito rico,” she beckoned him. She licked her lips. “Tu es muy sexy.”  
He showed her a smirk before peering back into the closet for a second.  
“Is there a belt around here somewhere?” he wondered aloud.  
“A belt? Why would you want a belt?”  
“Hold up the pants, of course. Why, d'you think you would bound me up with it?”  
“Not you. But me.”  
“Oh—” he raised his eyebrows at the notion. A low grumble emerged from her stomach.  
“Was that you or me?” he asked her, his smirk cracking into a full smile.  
“That was me. Feeling you and a little hungry.”  
“Feeling gluttonous and a bit randy—” He let one hand go from the waist band to touch his hairy chin. “Sluttonous, perhaps?”  
“Sluttonous? Lars!” She peeled the blankets off of her and climbed out of bed. “I'm going to get you for that now—”  
“Oh ho, shit!”  
He kept one hand on the waist of the jeans right over his hip as he darted for the door. But the legs of the pants were too long and too baggy so she beat him there. Lars leaned his back against the wall at the end of the hallway and Mia clasped her hands onto his love handles. The tips of her fingers tickled his flesh so quickly and abruptly that he yelped out and let go of the pants, and they dropped down to his ankles so he stood there with his back against the wall in his underwear. She tickled him and he erupted into a series of punch drunk giggles. He butted the front of his head against her chest he couldn't hardly stand the wiggly feel of her fingers on him. She lifted her hands from his hips: she held onto his face and lifted him up so as to look at him in the eye. She kept one thumb over his lips.  
“I'm going to get you so full of dinner tonight,” she breathed into his face.  
“And then what?”  
“And then? I'll fill you even fuller with milk and cookies then give you a lovely, lovely rub on your little potbelly and squeeze those love handles before we make love. I'll let you choke me with your thighs tonight. James and Ashley can join us if they'd like.”  
“Oh—whoa—erm, could we—go to a place where there's orange chicken?” he suggested.  
“Orange chicken? Of course. I know a place where we can go downtown where they make it right before you. I would love to give you so much rice, too.”  
“Eat my body weight in wonton soup, too.”  
“You don't ask for much, do you?” she teased. She let go of his face and crouched down to pick up the jeans from the floor. When she held onto the waist band, and found herself with her face right before his sleek thighs, she lunged forward and gave him a kiss on the inside on his right one. He gasped at the soft caress of her lips and thus backed against the wall again, but she clung onto his hip to give him a few more; she raised herself up to kiss the silky skin making up his underbelly.  
“Oh—I wish you knew how much I just love it when you—kiss me there,” he croaked out when she kissed him twice more again before sticking the tip of her tongue into his belly button. He rested the back of his head against the wall again and closed his eyes; she held onto the waist band of the jeans but she knew she had a grip on him.  
“I will let you bite me and suck on me again, by the way,” he added in a low voice. She lifted herself into an upright position while still holding onto the jeans: she kept them around his hips as she brought her breasts closer to his chest. She let out a soft moan right into his face and he ran his tongue along his bottom lip.  
“I want you,” she whispered. “I am ready to get heavy with you. Now let's get you a belt, papacito.”


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The teacher never told you anything but white lies  
> But you never see the lies  
> And you believe  
> But you know you have been captured  
> You feel so civilized  
> And you look so pretty in your new lace sleeves."  
> -"New Lace Sleeves," Elvis Costello

“This thing was just sitting at the back of the closet?”  
It was five in the afternoon and Lars had been walking around the house all day while holding onto the waist band of the jeans like a boy wearing a gunny sack. He had put on a plain white shirt about an hour before, otherwise he bore his chest out to Mia, who touched his bare skin at every whim. She had fished out a long leather belt from the back of the closet, near the same spot where he had found the jeans. She knew it belonged to Wayne and yet, when she brought it for Lars to wear, he raised an eyebrow at the sheer length of it.  
“Indeed it was!” she declared. “Put it on, put it on—here, I'll help you—”  
He lifted up his shirt with one hand, and then held onto one side of the pants with the other, as she slid the belt through the loops on the waist band, and cinched it to the farthest hole, and pressed it right against the skin underneath his belly button before she let go of them. They were so large that the top of the waist drooped around his hips like parachute pants.  
“Are those going to be fine?” she asked him.  
“I'm sure they will,” he assured her, shuffling his feet and letting the bottom hems collect all around his ankles, “besides it's not like we're going to a posh restaurant, either.”  
“That's true—would you like me to brush your hair, though?”  
“Hang on—I have got it—"  
He ran his fingers through his long hair several times before flicking his head back to fluff up his bangs and the light feathery plumes of hair atop his head. He had trimmed the stubble on his face and on his neck before he rinsed his skin with the soft soap and warm water in the bathroom, and then followed it up with a gentle smelling after shave. Mia on the other hand, had changed into a black low cut top and matching trousers; she thought of wearing her thigh high boots underneath her pants, but she instead settled on regular shoes. Once she gave her hair a light spritz of perfume, they wrapped themselves in their coats and headed out the door to her car in the driveway.  
Lars nestled down in the passenger seat, ensconsed in his clothing. Once she buckled herself into the driver's seat, she peered over at him staring at his reflection in the side view mirror. She noticed him touching the skin underneath his chin with his index and middle fingers, and then attempt to hold onto that little patch with both fingers and his thumb. She chuckled at him.  
“You're not fat,” she insisted.  
“Explain this double chin, then,” he scoffed. “Explain my belly, too. I could easily fill out these jeans at some point.”  
She rolled her eyes at the thought.  
“The double is round and plump—” She leaned next to him to plant a kiss under his chin, and then she held onto the right side of his face so she could kiss him again and again there. “—perfect for soft kisses. And your belly is lovely and so very sexy—” She reached down to give him a loving pat. “—you have got quite a way to go before you turn into the Blob. You're very sexy, papacito.”  
The tip of his tongue slid out from the far corner of his mouth and over his bottom lip; his lips curved up into a subtle little smile and his cheek bones filled out like round little apples.  
“You know, every time you compliment on my body and call me sexy, I can actually feel you growing hornier and hornier,” he confessed.  
“And you are correct. I feel it inside of my stomach and the tugging, tingling sensation right in between my legs. And it's because I am in love with your body.”  
He smacked his lips “You wanna know something?”  
“Yes.”  
“I feel the same way about you, min sexet pige.”  
“Mmm, baby—I'm going to make sure you get so full in there.” Mia kissed him again; that time, she followed it up with soft groan inside of her throat. “Let's get some dinner.”  
She switched on the car and they rolled out of the driveway to head into the western side of town, and to a Thai restaurant on the corner. Once he had made his way up to the front door while holding the legs of the jeans, Lars held the door for Mia, and they both entered the small, brightly lit restaurant with pure white walls and a smooth wooden floor of bamboo: all five patrons inside the restaurant had taken up three of the tables. tossed his head back and stared up at the ceiling for a moment: Mia peered over the short shadows casting over his eyes from the edge of his brow and his eyebrows. His cheek bones glowed with the soft rosy blush combied from the warm yellow light shining over his skin; she eyed the skin underneath his chin when something caught her eye in front of her. She turned her head and recognized that long shoulder length blond hair draped over the shoulders of a dark colored rain coat at the two tables in front of them.  
“Kurt!” she said in a voice clear enough to echo over the floor and the wall next to them. He turned his head and his face lit up: a brunette woman with a round face and large dark eyes nodded at the both of them.  
“Oh, hi!” he declared as they approached the table; he showed Mia a warm smile and Lars a light chuckle at the sight of his baggy clothes. “I didn't expect to see the two of you here.”  
“We didn't expect to see you here, either—how goes it?”  
“Oh, just out for a bite to eat—this is my girlfriend, Tracy.” The woman smiled at the both of them as she picked up her glass of ice water.  
“Hi there, I know he's Lars—”  
“My name is Lars and nothing fits.”  
Tracy chuckled at that before turning to Mia.  
“And you are—?”  
“Mia.”  
“Mia! Are you from around here?”  
“Yes, I am, technically. I came here from San Juan when I was real young but I grew up here.”  
“San Juan!” Tracy raised her eyebrows at that.  
“Oh, yeah, that's right, you're Puerto Rican,” noted Kurt. He gestured to the table before the two of them. “You both can sit with us if you'd like.”  
“That's too kind of you, Kurt, but I think Mr. Lars has already taken his seat—” He had planted himself in the chair at the table next to them to adjust the legs on his jeans. Mia set down her bag on the table before him.  
“Could you watch my things for a second? I have to use the ladies' room.”  
“Of course,” he told her. She wheeled around and started to head down the corridor when she halted right in her place at the sight before her.  
“Jen!”  
“Mia, hi! What're you doing here?” She flung her arms around Mia's shoulders, and she swore Jen could feel the hammering inside of her chest. She lifted her head from Mia's shoulder and beckoned her to turn around.  
“Oh, my,” Jen breathed at the sight of Lars, who was busy fiddling with the bottom hems of his jeans, “oh, my, who's this cute little ragamuffin?”  
“Jen, this is—Lars,” said Mia, feeling her voice tremble. “Lars, this is Jen Davidson. She's a—a friend of mine.”  
“I'm more than a friend, Mia,” she pointed out as he took her hand with both of his hands and gazed deep into her eyes.  
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked Jen; she craned her neck to look at Lars. “I'll be right back.”  
He nodded his head and that was her cue to guide her away from him; out of the corner of her eye, Mia noticed Tracy leaning over to whisper something into Kurt's ear. They hurried down the narrow corridor to the ladies' bathroom, a narrow bright room with a stone tile floor and three gray metal stalls, and once they both stepped inside, Mia ran a hand through her hair and let out a long low sigh.  
“What—is going on?” demanded Jen.  
“I should ask you the same thing,” Mia followed it up, pressing her hands to her hips. Jen knitted her eyebrows together.  
“Mia… what's going on?”  
She stared on Jen's baffled expression for a moment and nibbled on her bottom lip all the while. She dropped her gaze to the floor for a moment before closing her eyes and sighing through her nose.  
“Okay, Jen—can I tell you something?”  
“Yes, yes, yes. Mia, you're like a daughter to me. Of course you can tell me.”  
She sighed again.  
“Okay, but—please—please, please, please don't tell Wayne or Will about this if and when you see them.”  
“Yeah, of course. It's just me over at the house right now. You're secret's safe with me, honey.”  
“Okay.” Mia licked her lips and prepared to say it but she wasn't too sure, especially since they were the bathroom of a restaurant where everyone could eavesdrop of them at any given moment. She inched closer to Jen and bowed her head.  
“Lars is—my boyfriend.” That was the first time she had ever seen him in that light, but once the words left her lips she felt the weight lift from her shoulders. It was true and those four words rang throughout her mind when they left her lips.  
“What do you mean?” she asked in a near whisper.  
“He's—my boyfriend. We met a couple of months ago at the bakery—he walked in, and got some baked goods, and he asked about me. I wasn't wearing my ring so he assumed I'm single and we hit it off shortly afterwards. I've been falling for him in the past week or so.”  
“Hang on—you weren't wearing your wedding ring?”  
“No. I never wear my ring when I'm at the bakery.”  
Jen licked her lips and stared off to the side for a moment before speaking again with a serious look upon her face.  
“Mia—” she stammered. “—you do realize you cheated on my son, right?”  
“Yes, I know, Jen. And I've been doing everything I can to keep it hidden from him because I don't know how he'd react to it. He might destroy everything and everyone I love if I tell him. He did work in journalism, he has that ability to scout and sniff shit out. And I know how you truly feel about him, too.”  
“Yes I know, but Mia.” Jen closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. “I love you, but—whether or not, you married my son, and you married into our family, and then you cheated on him, and most of all, you cheated on us. With—with him. And so soon before Christmas, too. What does he do? Where is he even from? Because he didn't say a word to me.”  
“He's—He's Danish, Jen. His English is better than that of most Americans. He probably didn't say anything because you showed up almost at random. He's a drummer for a rock n' roll band. I went to their show up at the Rose Quarter a few weeks ago—they rock! I got to go backstage and hang out with them—they even came into Curl Up and Dye to get their hair done before hand.”  
“He's Danish? Like Denmark, Danish?”  
“Very much so. The standard to which all Danish people should be kept, if you ask me.”  
Jen grimaced at the thought.  
“He looked poor, honey. Long tangled hair and big, oversized clothes… and I know how Wayne can be with his money, so—this definitely looks like a repetition. Do your parents know about him?”  
“It's not,” insisted Mia. “Just because he sort of dressed up this evening doesn't mean he's poor. He just so happens to be very low slung and he likes to be comfy. He loves food so much. I love baking for him and making food for him. And I think I'm falling for him, too. And no, Mom and Dad know nothing about him.”  
Jen shook her head and pressed her hands to her hips.  
“I don't know, Mia. I just—I just don't know what to say about any of this right now.”  
“Please, Jen. He's very polite, and tenderhearted, and kind, and he absolutely loves meeting people. Really, go talk to him. Go get to know him. He's very sweet, I promise. Give Lars a chance. Put a little Lars in your heart.”  
She knitted her eyebrows together again.  
“Were those Wayne's pants he was wearing, by the way?”  
“They were. He just—he found them in the closet and put them on. He's wearing a belt, too, because they're way too big for him, but he's comfortable and I'm more than comfortable with him. And he did brush his hair, by the way.”  
Jen pursed her lips together before folding her arms over her chest.  
“Alright. I'll give him a chance. But that still doesn't excuse you, though. You still stepped out of line from the union between yourself and my son. It's going to take some time for me to reconcile it, but you are right about Wayne, though. I don't like the way he's behaved towards you and I have to confess—” She glanced over at the bathroom door for a moment to make sure they were alone in the room. “—I do feel you deserve better than the way he's treating you. So that said, now that I talk about it, I can see your intent here. And it's—it's good that you feel a bond with this strange Danish boy. That's a privilege most people are denied from. It'll be a hard pill to swallow but I think I can handle it. I sure as hell won't tell Will, either.”  
“Oh, thank you, Jen. Now if you excuse me, I need a moment.”  
“Of course, honey. Go right ahead.”  
Mia slipped into the stall right behind Jen and took a seat on the plain white toilet. She sighed with relief as Jen stepped out of the ladies' room and left her alone in there for the next five minutes. She hoped the secret would stay safe as she cleaned up and buttoned up her trousers.  
She stared at herself in the mirror over the sink as she let the water run over the palms of her hands. Her hands were clean for the time being. Now she had to face on her parents about Lars. She dried her hands with two of the paper towels from the dispenser before fixing a couple of loose strands of wavy hair over her temples and leaving the room to be with him again.  
Lars sat in his chair with his body turned to an angle so he opened himself to the rest of the room; underneath his right arm was an open menu, while right next to his forearm stood her purse. He lifted his head and his face lit up at the sight of Mia approaching him.  
“There you are,” he greeted her with a sweet smile. He gestured to the table next to them. “Check out who showed up, too.”  
Mia peered over at the neighboring table, and Kirk, who had washed his hair and combed part of it back from his face and put on a heavy black overcoat, and Marcia and Sonia, both of whom wore bright blue blouses with three buttons descending from the necklines.  
“Hey, you three—” she greeted them as she took her seat next to Lars.  
“There she is,” answered Kirk with a twinkle in his eye.  
“We felt like coming here, too,” explained Marcia, tossing her hair back from her face.  
“Don't take this the wrong way, Lars,” began Sonia with a playful grin upon her face, “but you're kinda starting to look like that little Buddha statue over by the cash register.”  
“Not taking that the wrong way at all, love. I know I have been stuffing myself silly lately—” He placed a hand over his belly and gave himself a little rub.  
“Mia makes the best food, doesn't she?”  
“Oh, yes. I was reluctant at first but now she and I are more than happy to continue it together.”  
“Aw!”  
Mia stood up again so as to sling her coat over the back of the chair. She then felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find Marcia coming face to face with her.  
“You guys look good together,” she whispered into Mia's face.  
“I feel good with him,” she replied in a low voice.  
“Do you—see yourselves together more often?”  
“I—I do, yeah.”  
“You better, darling,” Lars interrupted, running his finger along the edge of the menu. “'Cause I feel pretty good right now if I say so myself.” He flashed her a definite wink right at that moment.  
“Ooh, Lars gave her a little wink,” she heard Kirk mutter under his breath. Marcia patted her on the shoulder before returning to her seat at that neighboring table. Mia glanced over at Jen, who sat before the front window at the small table, all alone with a cup of tea and a book. She gazed up from her book, long enough to watch Mia take her seat. She had a frown fixated upon her face as Mia opened up her menu; she scanned over the soups at the beginning before lifting her head to see Jen cracking a smile and shaking her head. She sighed through her mouth right then. She was doing well.


	43. Chapter 43

“Good Lord—I—I never ate so—so much—so much in my whole life. Oh—”  
Lars reclined back in the passenger seat with the belt uncinched and the bottom of his shirt pulled up to the bottom of his chest. The palms of his hands ran over the smooth skin and he shifted his weight in the seat: the waist of the jeans lazily lay around his hips but he still slid them off of him so as to expose the whole middle of his body. Mia took her seat and tossed her hair back from her head; she rested her hands over her belly as well, but she felt no need to unfasten her trousers. She let out a relaxed sigh before turning her head to look at him rolling his head to the side, at the side profile of his cherry lips, the skin underneath his chin and all along his neck, and then to his belly, which poked out, only about an inch and a half, but to her she could see it all round and protruding full; she thought of sticking the tip of her tongue into his belly button before giving him a nice deep rub.  
“Oh—Oh, fuck—fuck—mmm—fuck me—”  
“Gladly!” Mia teased. He lifted his head to show her a baffled look upon his face.  
“In—In—In—In—In the car?” he stammered.  
“If you want,” she answered, grinning while feeling the flavor of the fried rice well up inside of her throat; she bowed her head and rested a hand over her mouth.  
“Darling, I—” He burped in his throat. “I—I feel like—like I'm—I'm gonna—I feel like I'm gonna—”  
“Pop?”  
“—float away.”  
“Yeah, you went pretty crazy with the rice and the wontons in there.”  
“I did say I'd—I'd—eat my weight—eat my weight in wontons. Did I not?”  
“You did. You did well, too.”  
“I swear I gained about—ten kilograms—just now. Oh—oof—ohhhh—”  
Mia pushed herself out of her seat so she could lean over Lars' body. She pressed her lips to the side of his face before moving onto his lips and then the side of his neck. He groaned inside of his throat as she planted seven kisses all along his neck down to his collar bone and then returned to his mouth once more for a longer, hardier kiss. She lay a finger against his lips.  
“Stop,” she whispered.  
“Woo! Yeah, Lars and Mia!”  
They peered out the window at Marcia and Sonia heading towards their car four spaces down.  
“Let's go—where—it's private,” he suggested.  
“Good idea, papacito,” she whispered, kissing his lips again. She tossed her hair back again before buckling herself into the seat.  
“Ugh, fucking—fock, you got any antacids with you? Like—in your purse?” he asked, pushing his bangs up from his brow. She raised her eyebrows at his request.  
“Are you feeling upset?”  
“A little bit,” he croaked out, “yeah.”  
She dropped the car keys onto the center console in between them but managed to scoop them back up in her hand and inserted the one into the ignition. Mia backed out of the space and they headed back to the blue and white house on the southern side of town: with each turn around the street corner, especially once the neighborhood houses entered their view through the imposing darkness, Lars kept his hands pressed against his bare belly.  
“God, I'm too full—” he moaned at one point.  
“It's okay, baby—we are nearly home—” she assured him. He rubbed his belly as she eased the car into the driveway. She switched off the engine and, once she had slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she climbed out of the car and rounded the front of the hood to the passenger side. Despite the darkness over them, she flung open the door and slid her arms under his neck, and prepared to lift him out of the car seat when he lifted his head; even in the dim light, she could make out the perplexed look upon his face.  
“I'm full but—not that full,” he grunted out.  
“I will at least help keep your balance,” she offered.  
“Sounds like a plan—oof—”  
He swung his legs out of the car and placed the soles of his feet onto the concrete; the bottom of his shirt fell back into place as he lifted himself into an upright position. He leaned forward to stand up and nearly lost his balance: he clasped his hands to his belly and stuck out his tongue at Mia. She put her arm around his shoulders and lay a hand on his chest: a pain seared up the back of her calf from her heel, which in turn brought out a wince upon her face. All she could think of at that point was the stiletto heels on the thigh high boots.  
“Are you okay?” he breathed out.  
“My—My ankles,” she sputtered.  
“Ankles aching you?”  
“Yeah, but I need to get you into the house, though.”  
“Darling, don't worry—about me. Here—let us—close the door—” He shut the passenger door with his hip and staggered towards the front step of the house. She fumbled with the keys before she found the correct one and unlocked the door. They stumbled into the dark foyer together; he reached over and flicked on the light, and pale yellow light washed over them from the ceiling. Neither of them took off their shoes as they stumbled into the living room together.  
Lars plopped down on the farthest couch cushion while Mia teetered over him. She lay her purse down on the arm of the couch and then she hurried down the hall to the bathroom; she clicked on the light and searched inside of the medicine cabinet for the container with the calcium tablets.  
She picked it off the top shelf next to the bandages and closed the door, and turned off the light, and doubled back down the hall to the living room. As she stepped through the doorway, she popped off the lid then slid two smooth white saucer shaped tablets into the palm of her hand, and handed them out to him for the taking. He lifted his head and his hand, and popped the tablets into his mouth. She closed the lid and placed the container on the table next to the arm of the couch before kneeling down on the floor next to his head and shoulders.  
Lars swallowed the tablets and let out a long low sigh.  
“Ah, yes—there we go—ooh, yeah.” He lifted the bottom of his shirt again to expose his belly and all of its slightly rounded, slightly plump beauty for her.  
“Feeling better?”  
“Ah, yeah. That helped—almost immediately.”  
She leaned back and moved her head in to kiss the skin right above his waist.  
“Ooh, that, too,” he added. She kissed him again before lifting her hand to stroke him; she ran the tip of her finger around the rim of his belly button. The end of the belt brushed against her face, and so she held onto the tip, and pulled it back a bit.  
“What are you doing?” he asked.  
“This thing was poking me in the face,” she stated in a flat tone.  
“Come up here, skat,” he beckoned her, motioning her with one finger. Mia took a knee on the floor so she loomed right before his face.  
“No, no, no, no, no—lay next to me. Like how we were laying the night before. Oh!”  
“Yes?”  
“Before we lay here again, go into the bedroom. In case you didn't notice—” He pressed the tips of his fingers against his lips to excuse himself. “—I got you a little something.”  
“I think I saw it,” she answered with a light wink. She lifted herself off of the floor, and once more headed down the hall to the bedroom and turned on the ceiling light. There on the nightstand, stood the silky royal purple pillow which he had brought up from San Francisco for her. She picked up the pillow and switched off the light, and ambled back down the hall to the living room with it pressed against her chest. She kept going to the front door to slip off her shoes without untying them. She stripped off her coat and hung it up on the hook with one hand before returning to the living room to join Lars on the couch.  
Mia held the pillow up against her low neckline as she leaned her shoulder against the side of the entrance.  
He lifted his head to show her a little smirk.  
“Murray Crimus, honey pie—min sexet pige,” he told her, resting a hand on his bare belly.  
“Murray Crimus, baby boy—mi papacito rico,” she retorted, ambling towards him with a gentle, undulating sway to her hips.  
She hoisted her knee onto the sliver of couch cushion in between his ankles and the back of the couch, and gazed on at him with a bow to her head. The tip of his tongue ran along the edges of his two front teeth and then along the inside of his bottom lip; a soft rosy blush bloomed in his cheek bones, and his lips looked as smooth as a knob of butter. Mia slithered in between him and the back of the couch while still keeping the pillow in her arm. She slipped it behind her head on the arm of the couch before laying a hand on his belly to give him a soft rub.  
“Your skin is extra silky tonight,” she whispered to him, “so gorgeous…”  
“All that rice—and all that orange chicken—it all does the belly good. That reminds me, would you like me to touch you, too?”  
“I'd love that, baby.”  
Without turning his head, he lifted her blouse with his right hand and started caressing the soft curvature of her belly. The tips of his fingers glided around in a circle right below her hip bone while her hand lay flat on his warm flesh.  
“That Jen is—quite the interesting person,” he remarked, rolling his head over to the side to sniff her hair.  
“She is what you would call an eccentric,” she explained; right then, she started to wonder why Jen was at the restaurant in the first place. Perhaps she felt lonely at the house, given she was alone there. She had an inclination to climb off the couch to give her a call, but the feel of Lars' fingers on her skin relaxed every muscle in her body, and the warmth of his body and the softness of the pillow invited her to stay there.  
“Not as interesting as you, though,” he whispered; he puckered his lips but he brushed right against the edge of her hairline. He kissed her again, that time he slid his head closer to her so she could better feel that soft, smooth skin. He shifted his body so he lay right up against her. His fingers curled around her hip, and he brought his lips down from her forehead to her mouth. He kissed her several times, each one as light and delicate as a feather.  
“Come to me, darling,” he whispered to her; she kept her hands upon his belly, and the warmth and softness of his skin with the firm full feeling inside of him was enough to give her the butterflies.  
“Only if you come to me,” she whispered back, giving him two kisses in return; the fluttering sensations inside of her stomach persisted to where they spread all over her torso. “God—oh my God, you sexy man—”  
“Hang on—”  
Lars lifted his head from their embrace for a second; he clasped a hand to his mouth right as a low, prolonged guttoral belch emerged from inside of him.  
“Wow,” she noted.  
“Yeah, that felt so good—” he confessed, returning his head to the side again; he ran his fingers through her hair to expose the side of her neck, “but this is even better—”  
He eyed the smooth curve along the side of her neck before he brought his head forward and ran his tongue there. She opened her mouth to let out a soft moan; his bangs brushing against her skin only added to the butterflies in her stomach. He lifted his head to look at her in the face with a brighter blush against his cheek bones.  
“I'm not sure if I want to—you know—I don't know how you would feel about it,” he confessed in a low voice.  
“I want to feel you,” she whispered.  
“Just feel me?”  
“Yes. I want to feel—your body and your—your love.”  
He swallowed as he eyed her breasts and the revealed skin upon her chest.  
“Only if you let me feel you, darling,” he told her as he slid his right hand up her blouse; the pads on his fingers wriggled about her back as he felt around for the back and the hooks of her bra. “I am the one who told you to feel me and not to think about it after all.”  
“And—look—” She gestured to the other side of the room, to the television propped in the far corner of the room. They were within the line of sight of that darkened screen.  
“We can curl up and watch cartoons when we're done!” he said in a hushed voice; she felt her breasts relax in the cups of her bra as he stayed in place right there next to her. She kept her hands pressed against the gentle round curve of his belly to take in some more of his warmth and his comfort.  
That full feeling inside of his stomach left him feeling firm and yet his skin was delicate and smooth, like a glass of whole milk. Her finger tips petted the fine hair growing down the middle of his belly down towards his waist; every touch and every feel of him was another line to the flurry of butterflies inside of her. A damp spot soon appeared in between her legs, but she wanted to keep it right here, right at this silky feeling. At one point, she let her right hand caress his hip and his love handle there, and hold him at the lower back, and bring him closer to her. They were the only ones in the house, and she didn't want it in any other way.  
Her forearm brushed over that plush deposit of flesh over his hip; she felt the waist bands of the jeans and his underwear had pushed down his hip, so she could feel more of him. More of him. More of him to love and nourish.  
“Gah—” she gasped out in between kisses, “—you are—you are so sexy—mmm—”  
“Speak for yourself, skat,” he whispered back to her, letting go of her mouth to hold her face in his hand. He gazed into her eyes and stuck out his tongue a tiny bit to wet his lips some more. “This is—really lovely.”  
“I don't want to leave this feeling,” she confessed.  
“Me, neither—too lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely—and lovely. And your hands on me—oh, darling—”  
“I want you rounder,” she whispered.  
“And I want you rounder,” he retorted.  
“I want you rounder more—the rounder you are, the better. It will make me wet. It will please me.”  
“Wet and soft?”  
“Oh, yes, baby—” She kissed him on the mouth again before she craned her neck to the rest of the living room.  
“I still have no idea where the remote is,” she confessed.  
“I saw it somewhere—” He rolled his head over and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “Are you feeling hungry again?”  
“No—why? Don't tell you're hungry again.” She flashed him a devilish grin.  
“Not exactly. But I might at some point tonight.” He winked at her. She tossed her hair back to show him her neck.  
“I say we sleep here tonight,” she suggested.  
“Here? On this couch?”  
“Yeah. Why not?”  
“It's a bit cramped.”  
“It's not cramped if I lay on you.”  
“True. But I'd like to take off these pants, though. And I am sure you would want to take off your clothes, too.”  
“You just want me to take off my clothes,” she scoffed; he rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.  
“Okay, you got me. But I still want you and I to be comfortable, though.”  
Mia lay her hands on either side of his face and gave him a kiss right on the lips.  
“Okay, baby—” She lifted herself into an upright position with her back against the back of the couch. She held onto the bottom of her shirt, and peeled it off of her body, and lay it over the top of the couch. The cups of her bra dangled over her breasts which was enough to send him into a scramble off of the couch. She leapt off the couch and darted towards the entrance of the living room. He gaped at her from the bottom of the couch and with his hands clasped to his stuffed belly.  
“Come out and play, papacito,” she called out in a light voice. Lars lifted himself into a crab position for a moment before he climbed onto his feet. She guided him down the hall to the bedroom to another round of love making on her and her husband's bed.


	44. Chapter 44

“Christmas came early, darling.”  
Lars hoisted himself onto the mattress but after hanging there in a squatting position for a moment, he collapsed onto his side before rolling over onto his chest for a moment. He lay there face down near the edge of the bed, while Mia lounged against the head board with her knees pulled up towards her chest. She had taken off her trousers and so she sat there at the head of the bed in merely her cotton panties; her knees guarded her bare breasts for the time being. She leaned forward to more closely examine the crown of his head before he huffed into the bed sheet right beneath his face.  
He lay his hands on either side of his head as if about to do push ups right there on the bed, but he lifted up his head so he could fold his arms underneath his chin. He gazed up at her like the king of a den with his feathery bangs hanging over his prominent eyebrows; her eyes wandered down to his waist and the jeans, which had slid off so far from his hips that they gathered around his knees like the tortilla on a burrito. She noticed the bottom part of his shirt riding up his body and exposing the smooth pale skin upon his bare back.  
“Roll towards me,” she beckoned him.  
He bowed his head before rolling onto his left side and then onto his back: the crown of his head lay right next to her left foot and so he peered up at her upside down.  
“Come up here. Be next to me.” She patted on the left side of the bed, Wayne's side of the bed. Lars rolled back onto his side and then onto his chest yet again so he could crawl on his belly up to the pillow right next to her. Before reaching the pillow, he shot out his right arm then lay the side of his head atop his shoulder and his upper arm. His chest heaved from the panting while his belly hung out from under the bottom of the shirt.  
“God, you're so cute,” she remarked, chuckling. His tongue lapped out of his mouth and then he let out a low whistle.  
“You're cute—just really cute—”  
She let go of her knees so as to reach out for him. Using her index finger and her thumb, she gave him a slight pinch to feel out a bit of the soft flesh on his belly, right between his belly button and his pelvic bone. But there wasn't much to pinch for her.  
“I don't have an inch to spare,” he told her in a low voice, “at least—not yet.” He winked at her.  
“I do like doing this, though,” she admitted, holding the bit of skin right next to the rim of his belly button. He showed her a smirk.  
“Well, if you can pinch my solar plexus, then I can touch these—”  
He lunged for her right breast, hanging out exposed and with the nipple hardening from the cool air in the room. He was about to run his fingers over her nipple when she smacked the back of his hand.  
“No, no, no, you dirty boy.” She wagged a finger at him and then pressed it against his lips for a minute.  
“No—” she whispered; Mia lifted herself up, and climbed over his body, and loomed over him on her hands and knees. Lars turned his head on the mattress so he could gaze up at her. His lips hung agape so as to expose his front teeth, and his cheek bones bloomed with that bright rosy pink.  
“Hey—” he squeaked out.  
“Hey?” she replied back.  
“Hey, guess what?”  
“What?”  
“I'm not wearing pants.”  
“Me, neither!”  
“So you wanna—?” His tongue slithered out of his mouth so as to lick his bottom lip and then the corners of his mouth curled up into a mischievous grin.  
“As long as I get to choke you with my thighs. Maestro.”  
“Wait a minute, I thought I was going to choke you with my thighs. Mistress.”  
“Let's do it with each other!” she suggested in a hushed voice.  
“Good idea, skat—”  
She dove down to kiss him on the mouth but he still had his neck twisted around from his laying on his side. He rolled part of the way onto his back so she could kiss him better, but she was already lifting herself into a squatting position right over his chest. She rested her feet onto Wayne's pillow so her bare thighs were on either side of Lars' head.  
“Ah, we are playing Twister, I see!” he declared, his voice cracking.  
“Shut up and kiss me,” she commanded, resting her butt on his chest before she reclined back with her hands on either side of his hips so she stayed off of his belly. She felt his lips brush upon the inside of her left thigh: she knew it was a bit difficult for him because she had very little room to stretch out her legs and thus have him kiss some more of the skin on both of her thighs. But she felt him kiss the inside of her right thigh, his lips feeling like smooth knobs of melted butter upon the sweetest and warmest of biscuits straight out of the oven. How she wanted him to move his mouth to her bare belly but she felt the edges of his teeth hold onto the hems of her panties, right there on the inside of her thighs.  
The feel of his teeth was enough to send chills over her skin and up her spine. She felt him tug her panties off of her hips: the cotton fabric brushing over her skin sent the butterflies in her stomach into a frenzy. She started to breathe faster and heavier: the dark skin all around her nipples hardening were more than from the cool air around them. The tiny damp spot in between her legs wet even more with every tug of her panties down her hips and then her thighs.  
Soon, he reached a point to where he could slide them off of her hips and thighs using his hands; he brought them to her knees when he lifted his head and stuck out his tongue as far as it could from his mouth.  
Her chest heaved from the velvety feel of his tongue against her lips. She tilted her head back so as to let out a soft moan from her mouth, that is until he started touching the edges of her clitoris with the tips of his index and middle fingers. Mia shut her eyes and pushed herself forward a bit: her mouth hung open to let out a louder moan. Her toes curled and her feet writhed all over the pillow and the bed sheet.  
“Glide og glide—” he grunted out before slipping his tongue back inside of her. She gasped at the interchanging between his tongue and his fingers: he slipped the tips of his fingers inside of her with such a swift movement that she swore it was right out of a dream.  
Mia groaned inside of her throat at the feel of his tongue followed by his fingers, then his tongue, and then back to his fingers. She yelped out when he touched that one spot, that tender spot right on the inside of her vagina with his two fingers.  
“FUCK!” she shouted, her voice echoing off the walls all around them.  
“Yeah, you like that, don't you, honey pie?” he stammered out in a broken squeak.  
“Oh—Oh—Oh, Jesus—lo haces como un profesional! Oh—ah—ah, mio Dios!”  
“Ja, tale for dig selv, skat—do me—do me—”  
Mia pushed herself off of his chest so she could lunge for his underwear. She yanked them down his legs and reached for his shaft, which had erected a bit into an angle over his hips. She stroked the firm, tightened skin with her left hand so fast, that he started breathing harder and harder himself within mere seconds. She lifted herself back onto her knees over him and rode him for a good, long minute until she stopped and lifted up from his hips.  
“Where's my—” she panted out, glancing about the room.  
“What?”  
“My diaphragm—” She climbed off of him as her clitoris and her vagina throbbed and dripped from the wet sensation.  
“Your—Yeh—Your purse, maybe?”  
“I—I don't know. Damn it!”  
He ejaculated right then and the line of semen landed on the leg of the jeans, which, at that point had all but fallen off of his legs and bunched all around his ankles.  
“Oh, shit,” he blurted out.  
“Hang on, let me look for it—” she stopped him in his tracks before scrambling off the bed. She hurried down the hall to her purse hanging on the hook next to the front door. She opened the lips and delved through the inside, and into the pocket on on the side. There it was!  
She rushed back to the bedroom with her breasts bouncing every which way with each step.  
“I found it, baby,” she told him, out of breath.  
“Oh, good!” exclaimed Lars; he slid his legs out of the jeans all the way. Mia spread her legs to slip it over the lips and then scrambled back onto the bed. She suspended herself onto her hands and knees right next to the jeans and on Wayne's side of the bed. Lars held onto her hips and leaned over her back; he moved to and fro right behind her. Every thrust, every pulse against the diaphragm and the lips of her clitoris.  
“I'm a dog—” she grunted out. “—a dirty rotten dog—a dirty, rancid—disgusting dog!”  
“No—me!” That time he thrust hard into her and her spine straightened out with the wave of the climax.  
“Fuck—yes! YES! That's it!”  
Mia shut her eyes and gritted her teeth for a moment before letting out low, heavy cries with each and every thrust, and upon each deep breath. She was doing it on her husband's side of the bed. The thrill made her heart pound even faster inside of her chest. Nothing could stop her at that point. Not even the knock on the front door down the hall.  
“What—What was that?” she sputtered out as he kept thrusting.  
“I don't—I don't give a fuck—” he moaned in between gyrations. “You're like a lake, holy fucking shit!”  
His fingers crept over her breasts; the tips of his index fingers and his thumbs wrapped around her hardened nipples, and he gave her a pinch on both sides. She yelped out. Her elbows started to buckle but her heart hammering inside of her chest and her vagina throbbing from the feeling kept her upright for him and his hardened dick.  
“Yes, Lars—yes, that's it! Yes, baby, that's it! That's it, papacito! THAT'S IT!”  
He gave her a couple more thrusts before he stopped in place, panting heavy and laying his head against her upper back.  
“Oh, God,” she gasped out; she sniffled and the whole room reeked of a thick musk.  
“Fuck—Fock—that was not of this world—holy shit—”  
He groaned out as he let go of her nipples and lifted himself off of her back. The doorbell rang right at that moment.  
“Is there someone at the front door?” he sputtered, rubbing his fingers underneath his bangs, which had just started to matt over his brow with musk and a tiny bit of sweat.  
“I hope not,” she croaked out in a broken voice. They remained there for a moment before the doorbell rang again, echoing through the house in the form of a delicate wind chime.  
“Ugh—” she bowed her head. “I don't want to get dressed.”  
“It's okay—I'll clean up and put these pants in the laundry—” he assured her. “I need a shower anyway. Something about sweating just—”  
Mia raised her head and sat down on the bed to look at him and to calm down her heart rate.  
“Are you serious? You're not even sweating!”  
“Again!”  
She was about to climb off of the bed when the doorbell rang yet again.  
“Coming!” she yelled out the bedroom door; she darted to the closet for her bathrobe.  
“That's what I said,” he cracked.  
“Oh, stop,” she scoffed with a chuckle and he laughed with her. She yanked her soft robe off of the hanger, and threw it around her body, and tied the belt closed. Once she adjusted her hair, she ducked back out into the hall and padded down to the front door. Mia fixed the lapels on the robe before she took a peek into the peephole. She recognized the two salt and pepper heads huddled against each other right outside of the front door; she yanked open the door and the cold air rushed into the house. She forgot she still had the diaphragm covering her clitoris, which was protected by the mere layer of fabric from her robe.  
“Mom! Dad!” she declared; she hoped Lars had already either hid out in the bathroom or was still in the bedroom cleaning up because she needed to hide him for the moment, perhaps even all night.  
“Feliz Navidad, mija,” Laura Panadera said as part of her greeting; the other part being her throwing her arms around Mia's body.


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "His love burns like a lightning honey  
> I'm right here I'm your star crossed lover  
> I lie here like a starless lover  
> I'll die here as your phantom lover  
> I never learn."  
> -Lykke Li, "I Never Learn"

Once Laura and Manuel had settled into the living room and Mia had set the coffee maker for a brew just for them when another knock on the door caught her attention.  
“Ugh, who else can be here at this hour—” she grumbled to herself as she padded out of the kitchen to the door. She opened the door to behold the sight of James and Ashley huddled against each other and wrapped in their heavy winter coats.  
“Oh, hi, you two,” she greeted them. “What are you doing here?”  
“James heard there was cake here,” said Ashley, shivering against the overhanging cold outside.  
“I swear, you and cake,” remarked Mia; James shrugged at that.  
“It's almost Lars' birthday, too,” he added, “so I wanna say it to him.”  
“Well, he's taking a shower right now—why don't you guys come in? My parents are here so come say hi.”  
“Oh, I haven't seen your mom and dad in so long!” declared Ashley; they entered the front foyer and, once the door closed behind them, Mia rushed down the hall to the bathroom, right as Lars closed the door. She opened the palm of her hand and slapped the panel to get his attention. He flung the door open, with the wavy locks of his stringy hair pushed back from the glow about his face and his bare chest exposed to her; he stood there, totally naked right before her.  
“Oh, my,” she blurted out; out of the corner of her eye, she noticed James and Ashley ambling into the living room together.  
“What's up?” he asked her, nonplussed.  
“Are you taking a shower?”  
“Of course. What else would I be doing? Shaving my chest?”  
“Er—would you like some coffee?”  
“Coffee? Well, can I at least—” Voices floated from down the hall; he hesitated and peered down to the entrance of the living room and the front of the house.  
“Who's here?” he asked in a near whisper.  
“My parents.” He gaped at her.  
“My God, are you serious?”  
“Yeah. I didn't even know they were coming, either. I didn't get a call or anything. James and Ashley just showed up at the door, too, for cake and to tell you happy birthday, too.”  
“Oh—fucking shit. Okay, well—tell the two of them I will be out in—I don't know, twenty minutes.”  
“Of course, baby.”  
She reached down to give his belly a little pat but he backed away from the doorway with a stunned look upon his face; he wagged his finger at her.  
“Hey, hey, hey, no! Not here—not here! Not now!” he scoffed in a hushed voice. “I'm still rather full, too.” He flashed her a wink right as she giggled at him as he shut the door; she tossed her hair back with both hands before sauntering back down the hall to better greet her parents. However, just before reaching the entrance to the living room, a noise in the kitchen caught her attention.  
Mia turned her head and spotted James in the kitchen next to the table with a knife in his hand. He gestured for her to come into the room; she took a brief glimpse back into the living room before she darted into the kitchen to join him; he towered over her as he held the knife over the cake.  
“Is it alright if I have a piece?” he asked in a gruff voice.  
“Of course!” she replied. “It is what you came here for, after all.”  
“So Ashley and I are leaving for the Bay Area tomorrow night.”  
“Tomorrow night, really?”  
“Yeah, after dinner. Taking the red eye. And I dunno what you guys are doing for his birthday, but you can join us if you'd like. You know, continue the double date.”  
“Or that can be the double date!” she suggested.  
“That could be the date—I'll run it by Ashley in a bit.”  
“I will run it by Lars, too. It is birthday, too, after all.”  
“It's his birthday.” The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled up with the catlike grin crossing over his whole face; the slice separated from the rest of the cake. “Where is he, by the way?”  
“Shower. He'll be out in—twenty minutes, I think is what he said.”  
“Okay. Do you have any plates?”  
“Plenty—”  
Mia grabbed a clean white plate, the penultimate one left in the cupboard. She wondered if her parents would be willing to share a plate as she needed to do some of the dishes before Wayne returned home anyway. She handed James the plate and one of the forks out of another drawer and then they crossed the foyer to the living room; Laura and Manuel were seated on the couch, right near the farthest arm of the couch, right where she and Lars made love mere hours ago. Meanwhile, Ashley took her seat in the recliner on the other side of the room; she stood up out of the chair to make room for James but he waved his hand at her.  
“No, sit here,” she beckoned him.  
“I'm fine, Ash,” he insisted; Mia sank down on the cushion next to Manuel, who turned his head and showed her a warm smile. His graying hair and short stubble both carried the combined scent of cologne and menudo, a combination that reminded her of home.  
“Que paso?” he asked her as part of his greeting to her.  
“Muy bueno. Me alegro de que estoy de vacaciones ahora mismo.”  
“Dónde está tu marido? Dónde está Wayne?”  
“Er—el esta California ahora.”  
“Ah, y que esta haciendo alli?”  
“No lo sé, no me lo dijo.”  
“Hm. Y quién es este caballero aquí con Ashley?” She turned her head to see James taking his seat in the recliner and then Ashley planted herself onto his lap; he dipped the tines of the fork into the narrow point of the slice of cake, and picked up a piece, and pointed it at her mouth.  
“Se llama James. El esta uno amigo.”  
“Hm? You talkin' 'bout me?” he piped up.  
“Oh, James, don't be rude,” Ashley scolded with her mouth full; he chuckled as he took another bite of cake.  
A low whistling noise emerged from the wall on the other side of the room; James turned his head to take a glimpse behind him and then up at the ceiling.  
“That's the pipes,” Mia pointed out. Manuel frowned at that.  
“El agua esta corriendo,” she told him in a low voice.  
“Porque el agua esta corriendo?”  
“Why is—the water running?” Laura reiterated the same question. Mia opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted.  
“Lars taking a shower,” said James as he took another bite.  
“Quien es Lars?” asked Manuel.  
“Her boyfriend.”  
“James!” Ashley scoffed, putting a hand over his mouth, but it was too late at that point. He jerked his head out from underneath her hand while Laura and Manuel gaped at her there on the other end of the couch.  
“Un novio!” Manuel barked. “Desde cuando tuviste novio!”  
“Mia, como pudiste?” Laura demanded. “Y mientras todavía estás casado?”  
“Mom, Dad—puedo explicarlo!”  
“Será mejor que tengas una explicación!” she cried out as they both climbed to their feet and gaped at her in shock. “Como pudiste! Y tan cerca de Navidad, también!”  
Out of the corner of her eye, Mia noticed James whispering something into Ashley's ear. All she could hear over her parents' voices was her saying, “it's like a Spanish speaking soap opera.”  
“Eso explica por qué no respondió cuando la llamamos antes,” said Manuel to his wife.  
“Espera un minuto, antes?” Mia repeated, standing to her feet.  
“Si!”  
“Quien?”  
“A eso de las cinco de la tarde,” said Manuel.  
“Cinco! Five! You called me at five? Oh, God, dammit—”  
Laura and Manuel stormed out of the living room and back into the hallway to fetch their coats.  
“Espera, a dónde vas?” she demanded.  
“Nos vamos,” he scolded her as he took his coat off of the hook.  
“No! No, no, no, no, no!” she insisted.  
“Adios, Mia,” Laura told her off in a broken voice. “Nos vamos y no volveremos hasta que te des cuenta de lo que has hecho. Como pudiste… después de todo lo que te enseñamos—Ni siquiera tienes un árbol de navidad aquí!”  
She brought a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes. Manuel fumed at her as he put an arm around Laura and guided her out the front door. It slammed behind them as they made their way back outside. The timer on the coffee maker made the soft ding to indicate it was done brewing. Mia closed her eyes and bowed her head to realize what had happened back there.  
“What did I do,” James called to her in a small voice. She wheeled around to face both him and Ashley, both of whom had befuddled expressions upon their faces. She sighed and then tossed her hair back from her face. The screech of wheels on the pavement outside sliced through the sudden wave of quiet over the house.  
“It's not your fault,” she assured him. “I forgot to tell them—I was dating a guy and I didn't bring him to their house. I just—forgot.”  
“Oh, damn. That was pretty dramatic, though. My God.”  
“It's a Puerto Rican thing,” added Ashley.  
“Yeah, it really is. But like I said—it's not your fault, James. If anything, you should blame me.”  
The whirring sound in the walls abruptly stopped and that was when Mia knew Lars had finished his shower. She sighed again.  
“Would you two like some coffee?” she suggested.  
“I'll have some,” said Ashley, clearing her throat. “With cream, pretty please.”  
“Yeah, me, too, please.” James dipped the tines of the fork into the slice of cake yet again. “I take mine black.”  
Mia ran her fingers through her dark hair. Their words seared through the Spanish speaking part of her mind and then back into English. They knew she had a boyfriend outside of her marriage and they yelled at her for it; she also never got the opportunity to clarify it like she did with Jen. On top of this, she was in disbelief that she had just missed them calling her that evening, too.  
She trudged into the kitchen for a pair of clean mugs, but as far as she knew, she wanted to do the dishes and clean off the dirt from her hands. She imagined the worst happening after that: the word spreading throughout her parents' families and to their colleagues and their neighbors in the form of classic gossip. But then the worst case scenario crossed her mind after that, word spreading to her husband!  
She poured them both cups of coffee there on the counter, and with the sound of her parents yelling at her swirling throughout her mind. Not even the sound of the bathroom door opening could shake that memory. She turned to the refrigerator for the jug of cream and noticed she needed some more, as there was just enough for Ashley to have her cup.  
Lars stood in the doorway with his hair wavy from the warm water and a towel wrapped around his thickening waist. He took a glimpse back into the living room and then took another look at Mia with his eyebrows knitted together.  
“What the hell was going on here? I heard a bunch of yelling.”  
“My parents and I got into a big fight,” she explained in a single breath. She took off the cap and poured the remainder of the cream into Ashley's cup, then she disposed of the jug into the trash can. “Cut me pretty deep, too.”  
“Aw. I'm so sorry.”  
“No, no—it's alright. It was my fault, anyways.”  
She picked up the mugs and walked towards him, but he never moved out of the way. His belly poked out from his body a tiny bit; the very sight of that slight curve around his waist was enough to relax the muscles in her body.  
“You know, if it makes you feel better, I never liked it when I get yelled at, either. Be it from my parents or someone else.”  
“Really? I don't imagine you getting yelled at.”  
“I was, though. I still do from time to time.”  
“GODDAMMIT, LARS!” James shouted from the next room with his voice booming through the walls. While Ashley burst out laughing, Lars lunged forward with his eyes wide with alarm, closer to Mia and the cups of coffee.  
“You see?”  
“I do. And—er—I don't know how you would feel about this—but James suggested we make our little double date down in San Francisco. I know, we had plans for me to come down for New Year's.”  
“Oh, darling, you still can. It is a week away, but it is doable if you don't mind at all.”  
“Not at all, papacito. Come on—let's have a seat.”  
The two of them padded into the living room: Lars kept a hand on the edge of the towel as he took a seat on the far end of the couch, right where Laura had been sitting before hand. Mia handed James and Ashley their mugs of coffee, and she traded the former for his emptied plate and the fork to take them into the kitchen.  
“Anyways, happy early birthday, brother of mine,” said James.  
“Yeah, happy birthdays, sweet boy!” declared Ashley.  
“Thank you both,” said Lars with a shy little chuckle to his voice.  
“Take it easy on the cake, too—” James cracked; Mia stood before the kitchen sink so even though they still remained within earshot, she could pick up some stray words in between the trickle of the water from the faucet onto the metal basin beneath her. Lars said something, and then Ashley said something. James let out a little chuckle in response. Then Ashley said something.  
“Really?” Lars raised his voice in surprise. Then Ashley said something, which was then followed by James saying something else, followed by Ashley once again.  
“Yes,” said Lars.  
“No,” argued James.  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes!”  
“Dammit—” Mia chuckled at that as she placed the cleaned plates and silverware into the drainer next to her. She switched off the water for a moment to scrub some more dishes without the water rushing out of the faucet.  
“Avert your eyes, both of you,” Lars was saying to them. “I'm gonna get naked—don't look—don't look! Don't focking look!”  
Mia turned her head to see him in the doorway of the living room and unfurling the towel from around his waist. He scrunched his face as he scratched down between his legs.  
“Gah—the return of the angry itch—with Lars Ulrich—” His eyes popped open to see Mia standing right there.  
“Except you—you can look,” he told her in a voice so low that it floated over the floor of the kitchen. She licked her lips at the sight of him and then she switched the water back on to rinse off the dishes. He wrapped the towel back around his waist and returned to his seat. Ashley said something, then James said something.  
“No,” said Lars over the trickle of water.  
“Yes,” argued James.  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes!”  
“But—”  
“But?”  
“And that's a big 'but', too—it is her house after all—”  
“They're not staying here!” Mia hollered out the kitchen.  
“Told you,” Lars pointed out.  
“Alright—” said James. She scrubbed off a few more dishes before she washed off her hands and then dried off with the clean towel. James and Ashley had finished their cups of coffee and slipped past her to rinse them out, one after the other, and then place them on the counter top next to the sink.  
Ashley flung her arms around Mia to bide her good night; James followed suit and then they strode out of the kitchen for their coats. Mia leaned against the edge of the entrance to watch them step out of the house with one final good night to both her and Lars before closing the door.  
She let out a sigh as her eyes wandered into the next room and the sight of him on the couch with his bare naked legs spread apart and his feet pointed out from the floor. He rolled his head over the top of the couch to look at her before he reached down to unfurl the towel again. A mischievous smirk crossed his full face.  
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she muttered.  
“I say you and I turn in for the evening,” he suggested. “And then we should have a nice big breakfast. Just get our bellies full for the trip back down there to San Fran.”  
“Sounds good by me, baby boy. Papacito.” In spite of what happened earlier with her parents, she could not resist the smile crossing her face. She lifted her hand and curled her index finger to coax Lars back into the bedroom. He left the towel there on the couch as he climbed to his feet and then leaned to the side to switch off the light. She turned off the kitchen light and she led him back to the room, all while using the dim light from outside. Despite everything that happened, she had a smile on her face. Her parents knew about her and Lars, and yet a part of her wanted them to know about it. She wanted them to know that she had stepped out of line and found something she wanted that her husband couldn't give her.


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this fic back in early February, I decided to bring it to AO3 for two reasons: first, I just need a safe place for my erotica. I joined in the wake of Tumblr's NSFW ban; although chapters are available there (haveyourcakemetfic!), and you guys reading right now can find extra goodies there, including a spin off that's Lars' stream of consciousness which I started this morning—I might put it on here, though. Secondly, when I started, I was in a desperate position with my writing and I made a bet with myself to write the lewdest fic I could, and maybe, just maybe, the longest, too (what's the longest bandfic? Anybody know?). I'm writing the only het fic in the Metallica fandom here (slash is good and all, but let's mix it up!) and we're just getting started. So to you guys reading right now, thank you. I love you.  
> Anyways, I played a lot of dirty blues when I wrote this one, so... enjoy, babies ;)

Mia awoke to the soft sound of crunching right in her ear; the sound was then followed by the contractual sound of swallowing and a soft, satisfied groan. She lay there as she heard another crunch in her ear, followed by a series of soft crunches and then another bout of swallowing. She opened her eyes when all she heard was that crunching sound again. She twisted her neck a bit and turned her head back to see, out of the corner of her eye, Lars laying on his back, right behind her there on the other side of the bed.  
She rolled over onto her back to take a better look of him in the dim light. He lay there on his back, facing the ceiling and never wavering his gaze from the tiles over their heads.  
He had peeled off the blankets from the top part of his body so as to expose himself to her; she examined his chest and the extra sinews of flesh forming all around his nipples to help fill him out. Her eyes wandered back up to his neck, and the sight of the soft pocket of flesh underneath his chin growing fuller and rounder; she gazed back down at his belly, which started to poke out with a nice round curve right near the base of his chest. The roll around his waist began to poke out a bit more with some softness. It looked as though he had gained a little weight overnight.  
“Darling,” his voice broke once he opened his mouth.  
“Yes?” she asked, rolling over onto her left side and resting the side of her head in her left hand.  
“I've realized something,” he whispered.  
“What's that?”  
He rolled his head over the top of the pillow and stared at her deep in the eyes: his green irises penetrated the fabric of her being like his head would her fresh hymen.  
“I am not getting fat from eating, but from riding my dick up your cunt.”  
“Oh, really?” She raised her eyebrows at that.  
“Yeah.”  
“So fucking me and drinking my cunt liquor is doing more for your nuts than nuts themselves?”  
He rolled his head back to where he gazed up at the ceiling; he then brought his hands up to his body and started feeling himself up.  
“Look at my belly. My big fat belly. I'm getting a big fat belly.”  
“It's not that fat,” she assured him.  
“It's poking out and I'm looking a lot like that Buddha in the restaurant like how Sonia put it last night.” He dropped his hands to the soft flesh in the middle of his body. “You see?”  
“I'm seeing. I'm looking. And I wanna start feeling myself to the sight of it.”  
“I'm fat.” His voice broke at that.  
“You're chubby.”  
“What's the difference?”  
“Chubby means you're a bit fuller but have not lost your shape. Fat means you've ran out of room.”  
“I feel I've gone over my borders.”  
“Maybe a few pounds—” She reached out to rub his protruding belly with her right hand. His skin felt soft and but a bit cool to the touch like a sheet of satin. “—remember our little pact?”  
“Thirty pounds. How could I forget?”  
“Besides what were you eating just now?”  
“A couple of your macarons. I thought of getting myself another slice of cake, but I feel like you're going to make something else, something better.”  
He rolled his head back over the pillow again to look at her in the eye again; a small smile crossed his face and he fetched up a sigh, which emerged out from his nose. He knitted his eyebrows together.  
“What's the matter?” she asked him in a gentle voice.  
“Where's your pillow? The one Jerry and I got for you?”  
Mia peered down inside of the blankets and the sight of something jutting out from between her thighs. She reached down for it and found out that, at some point during the night, she slipped it underneath the crotch of her panties.  
“Right between my legs,” she whispered.  
“Ah, I see how you are.” The smile curled up at one corner to form a smirk for a moment before it vanished into a flat line of a frown. “I need to weigh myself.”  
“There's a scale in there, baby boy.”  
Lars lifted himself into an upright position and his belly pooched out into an even rounder, fuller curve: she reached out to touch his waist. The tips of her fingers caressed the flesh over his hip: his love handles had filled out and grown softer with the extra pounds, however much he had put on that night. So much softer and so much sexier.  
He swung his legs around so they hung over the edge of the bed for a brief moment; he then climbed to his feet and he padded out of the room to the hall and the bathroom. She watched the naked backs of his thighs and the bare flesh making up his butt gyrate about with every step, until he stopped before the bathroom scale. In the dim light, she watched him climb onto the top and stand there for a moment with both hands on his belly.  
“Another eight pounds,” he called out.  
“So that would make fifteen altogether,” she concluded. “You have a got a ways to go, papacito.”  
Lars stood before the bathroom mirror with his hands still on his belly; he leaned over to switch on the light. She watched him rub that soft curve, starting at the base of his chest and then down towards his waist. The pads on the tips of his fingers running right over the soft skin making up his thick waist and above his hip bone, which still poked out despite his extra new flesh. Mia licked her lips and cocked out her hip a bit more as he turned to the side to look at his side profile: she had a straight on view of his body, in particular that soft slender crescent of a shadow cast down from the lower side of his belly onto his hip; growing fuller and more sensual. She noticed that the muscles on his arms and his thighs had begun to thicken up, too; she wanted him fuller and rounder. He would be stronger and more of a beautiful boy to her.  
He turned back around so the side of his body faced her again.  
She clambered out of bed and darted into her closet for the overnight bag, the same one she took with her to Bainbridge Island for Thanksgiving. She knelt down on the closet floor so as to delve through it, and found the red lace he liked, but that wasn't what she came to the bag for. There at the bottom of the bag was a silky rope, the same silky rope she and Mikayla bought in that shop in Georgetown. She took it out of the bag and zipped it back up before stepping back out to the bedroom.  
She sneaked out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen, past Lars muttering “—so big—getting so big and round—” to himself as he pinched the skin underneath his chin.  
She jerked out one of the chairs from the table and rearranged it so the seat faced the stove and the sink. She slung the rope over her shoulder before she searched through refrigerator for the whole milk, and then, once she closed the door with her hip, she returned to the stove top for a large, clean saucepan and a wooden spoon, and then poured the milk inside. She turned up the heat on the burner to bring it up to temperature and then ambled to the pantry for the sugar and a measuring cup.  
Once she had measured out the sugar to meet up with the recipe she had firmly lodged inside of her mind, Lars ambled into the room, wearing a clean pair of jeans, so clean in fact that the waist band hugged his hips. She couldn't resist the playful grin on her face.  
“Getting a little snug, I see,” she noted, stirring the milk and the sugar.  
He sniffled the air. “What are you making?”  
“You'll see. And don't sniff, either.” She wagged her finger at him and then gestured to the chair behind her. “Have a seat.”  
He padded towards the chair and sank down in the seat at an angle, so he could cross his legs. She turned her head to look at him.  
“Don't sit like that,” she advised him.  
“Why not?”  
“Just don't.”  
He uncrossed his legs so he sat there with one elbow on the back of the chair: she peered back at him again to see his lower belly spilling over the waist band of his jeans by about a hair.  
“Is that rope?” he asked her, tossing his hair back from his face.  
“Baby, you know it is.” She returned her attention to the saucepan to avoid scalding the milk and the sugar: she reached forward to dial back the heat.  
“May I ask what you are doing with rope?”  
“That is for me to know and for you to find out,” she replied, feeling the smile cross over her face again. “Could you—er—get me my bain marie out of the cupboard back here? Please?”  
“Oh yes.”  
She heard him climb out of the seat and open the cupboard. There was silence, and then—  
“This coppery thing right here?”  
She turned her head to see him knelt down before the open cupboard, and holding a copper pot with two handles right in front of his face.  
“That's the one,” she answered; he closed the cupboard, climbed to his feet, and ambled to the counter next to her. The milk and sugar began to switch into a light brown color, and the concoction started to smell faintly of caramel.  
“Right here?”  
“Of course, chico hermoso.”  
He raised his eyebrows so far up his brow that they hid behind his bangs.  
“I like that one,” he confessed in a low voice. He peeked into the pot for a whiff and a view of what she was making. “Caramel?”  
“Nice, thick caramel—for our thickening bodies. Then I'm going to make custard in there—in the bain marie.”  
“Ah, crème de caramel, I see.”  
“If you want to call it that,” she said with a shrug as she gave the caramel another stir: after another minute, the concoction browned even more and soon the aroma of cooked sugar blanketed the room and the two of them in a sweet, welcoming warmth. “In Puerto Rico, we call it flan.”  
“Oh, I see.”  
She turned her head to see his face looming close to her, and licked her lips at the sight of him.  
“I have to watch the caramel,” she insisted in a low voice, “so it does not burn. Go have a seat—big boy.”  
“Not until I find out what you are doing with that rope.” he hissed.  
“No.” She lifted a finger to his cherry lips and stared into those green irises. She stirred the pot twice more before leaning in closer to his face; she thought of planting a kiss on his cheek or on the delicate skin underneath his chin, but the caramel was too close to being done to risk it.  
“Go sit down,” she ordered in a whisper so light she may as well have breathed it.  
Lars stuck out the very tip of his tongue out of his mouth and ran it over his bottom lip so he licked her finger a bit. But then he moved his head back and slowly strode back to the chair with a gentle sway to his hips all the while.  
Mia adjusted the rope slung over her shoulder and then she gave the caramel one last stir before removing it from the burner and putting the lid on top to keep the heat inside. She had done it several times before growing up; she took the top pot out of the bain marie and, careful not to overdo it, she poured the milk inside and placed it on the counter for a moment to fetch two eggs out of the refrigerator. Lars watched her from his chair as she cracked the first eggshell on the edge of the counter.  
With a flick of her wrist, she was able to separate the first yolk from the white, which she slid into the broken shell; as for the yolk, she dropped it right into the milk. Using her free hand, she opened the top cupboard for a small white bowl for the egg white, and then repeated the process with the second egg. As she whisked it up into a light fluffy cream, and added some more sugar, a pinch of salt, and a dash of vanilla out of the cupboard, she thought about taking the extra to James and Ashley when they saw each other later on that evening, and maybe even Kirk, Jason, Marcia, and Sonia if there was plenty more abound. She took the whisk out of the pot for a second to check on that smooth creaminess, like an off white velvet. Soon it would become that warm, sensual flan reminiscent of all those Christmases and those evenings following a fight with her parents or with Wayne.  
She then filled the bottom pot with warm water from the faucet and placed it back on the burner, and slid the pot with the milk over that. Washing her hands twice, she caught Lars clearing his throat again.  
“I like how you save your egg whites,” he remarked, eyeing the bowl of egg whites on the counter behind her.  
“Well, of course—never know when you are going to need them for meringue,” she answered, drying her hands on the towel on the handle of the oven; she then put the whites on the top shelf of the refrigerator. She could come back to them for a proper covering.  
Mia reached up to adjust the rope over her shoulder and then she remembered her reason for taking it out of the overnight bag. Before he could speak up again, she lunged for him and whipped the rope off of her shoulder. She shoved him back against the chair with her hand upon his chest and her mouth over his lips. Using her free hand, she took one end and looped it around the back of the chair. She let go of his chest so as to hold onto the other end and wrap it around him twice. She yanked on the soft silky sinews to make sure it was snug enough to hold him down. Once she had her finger to hold the rope in place, Mia let go of his mouth and hastily tied two half hitches over each other right in the middle of his chest.  
“What are you doing?” he demanded, his face flustered and his mouth agape. She tugged on the rope to adjust it. He struggled to move out of the chair.  
“What in the hell are you doing?”  
“Making you breakfast,” she replied, her voice husky and smooth like the caramel on the stove behind her. He swallowed.  
“But why tie me up, though?”  
“Why not? You think I'm letting you get out of here on an empty stomach?”  
“Yes, but why tie me up, though?”  
She set her hand over his mouth and leaned closer to his face so he could smell the sex on her skin and her hair.  
“I know what you want,” she whispered. “And you know what I want.”  
His breathing relaxed and that was when she let go of his mouth to expose his parted cherry lips.  
“I do,” he whispered. “Give it to me, skat.”  
“Be patient. The custard needs to cook.”  
“And how long will that be?”  
“Well—” She took a seat on his lap with her legs spread wide open so the crotch of her panties were an inch from the crotch of his jeans. “—it is a copper pot cooking it by way of a warm bath, and so it mustn't be rushed. I can always tantalize you with caramel, but that's hot. I don't want to hurt your beautiful body.”  
She eyed the cake upon the table behind his head, but she thought he was going to have enough sugar that morning alone.  
“How do you feel about avocado?” she suggested to him.  
“Avocado? Delicious—and full figured, like—my little lap dance here.”  
“Would you like a little guacamole?”  
“Only if we get to have something from my culture when we get to my house.”  
“Absolutely—chico hermoso.”  
She lifted herself off of his lap and opened the refrigerator door; she fished out the fresh black avocado with the dimply skin out of the crisper drawer. Closing the door, she took the avocado to the sink for a quick bath before she sliced it in half with a clean knife upon the wooden cutting board. She sliced one of the two halves from the top down, and the black outer skin fell off upon the contact with the blade. She returned to Lars with the slices of avocado in hand; he opened his mouth as she slipped in the first sliver. His mouth engulfed the whole slice; he chewed it a bit before swallowing, and then she gave him another slice, followed by another, and another, and another, and then the last one. She returned to the other half of the avocado for herself and to dispose of the large spherical seed.  
The combined aromas of the caramel and the custard relaxed every muscle in her body; she checked on the custard in the bain marie and smiled at the sight of the concoction settling under a veil of steam. She put the lid back on top for another moment and reached into the drainer for a clean plate and a fork. She hung there with her hands upon the edge of the counter and her butt pointed out towards Lars' face. She relished in the smell of the custard cooking for a bit longer and then lifted the lid again. That soft creamy yellow color over a firmed up concoction is what she knew so well.  
“Custard's ready,” she told him, turning off the heat and picking up the spoon again to scoop some out into the bowl.  
“And so am I,” he replied. She picked up the pot of caramel on the back burner and, once she gave it a few more stirs to loosen it up again, drizzled some over the soft custard, and set the pot back down in its place. She stepped back to Lars with the bowl in hand and held it right underneath his nose. He closed his eyes and his lips dropped open at that warm smell all around him.  
“Oh, my gracious God—this is immensely erotic right now.”  
“It's all for you, baby.”  
She stuck the tines of the fork into one side of the custard and fed it into his mouth. He rolled his head forward while still keeping his eyes closed; he groaned inside of his throat at the flavors dancing inside of his mouth and then he swallowed it down.  
“Holy shit, that's delicious,” he breathed out; he lifted his head to look into her eyes. “You know what's all for you?”  
“What's that?”  
“All of San Francisco and all of Denmark while we're here.”  
She slipped another forkful of flan into his mouth and watched him hold it in his mouth for a moment before swallowing.  
“It's going to be a good night, papacito.”  
“If I might say so myself.”  
“Murray Crimus.” She dipped the fork into the flan again but that time leaned into his face to kiss him on the lips, which tasted of that warm caramel and soft milky custard.  
“Murray Crimus,” he whispered back.  
“And happy birthday,” she added, lifting the fork to his mouth.  
“And happy birthday to me,” his voice broke as he took another bite.


	47. Chapter 47

Mia could not remove the flashes of red and gold out from her mind as they headed for the exit of the airport; despite the tinsel and the garlands everywhere, she thought of camera flashes over the stretch of red carpet. One of those bouquets of pale yellow poinsettias resembled a whole series of a flash bulbs. Glitter in the air and it felt like stardust raining down over the crowns of their heads, the humble baker with another job as a hair stylist and the drummer to a rock n' roll. She was with Lars, and Ashley was with James, and Marcia and Sonia had to share Kirk, and yet no one knew about Jason at that time.  
Lars kept his arm around the back of her waist as they led James and Ashley out to the pitch darkness awaiting them. The four of them stood on the edge of the sidewalk for a moment before crossing the dark pavement to the dimly lit parking lot.  
Mia peered over her shoulder to the low buildings making up the airport and had an odd feeling emerge inside the pit of her stomach. It was inexplicable, but she felt it: that feeling of dread, perhaps similar to that feeling of dread Lars had talked about during their dinner back up at the house. She stuffed her hand into her coat pocket to jingle her keys over the ambient noise of the streets outside of the parking lot. He led her to the compact black car in the spot on the far right side of the lot, a ways from the front door. On the face of the lid of the trunk, she spotted a Deep Purple sticker propped next to a gray square with “Heart and Soul: Copenhagen” inscribed inside in big black letters.  
“So this is my humble steed here—where are my keys—” He searched through his coat pocket for his car key and then in the other pocket, and then in his jeans pockets before setting down his overnight bag on the pavement next to his feet. “Shit, where THE FOCK IS MY—here it is—” He took out the key ring out from the inside pocket of his coat and stuck the first one into the lock of the trunk; it popped open with a soft click! from the inside and then he placed his things on the inside. He gestured for her to give him her overnight bag but she set it inside of the trunk instead; he shrugged his shoulders and then closed the lid. Lars unlocked the driver's side door, opened it, and reached down to push the button unlocking the other four doors; the first thing Mia did upon opening the door was placing her bag on the floor right underneath the glove compartment.  
“I am going to have to eat something when we get back to my place,” he promptly told her once she shut the door.  
“Already?” she demanded, buckling her seat belt.  
“Well, yeah,” he replied, unfazed as he strapped himself into his seat. “There is a reason why I was so reluctant to eat up the rest of the sausages the stewardess gave us earlier.”  
“And what would that be?”  
“It made me think of your chorizo.” And with that, he started up the car and they pulled out the parking lot to the dark street. It was the middle of the night and the lamps lining the sides of the street shone into the windows for a few seconds before giving way to darkness again.  
“By the way, I should tell you—since there is only one of me sleeping in the bed back at my place—there is only one bed. Not that I don't think you would mind after all.”  
“You just want to tell me that.”  
“Exactly! So let's see—I have only lived here for three years and yet I'm still trying to get acquainted with these bloody—American signs here in Northern California—ah, here we go! Next stop, my place in El Cerrito.”  
Mia peered out the window as they wound along the small two lane road cresting along a low hill: she was met with mere darkness to her right, only perforated by the glow of his headlights.  
“I don't think I've been here,” she confessed as they turned a corner looking out to the pitch dark flat stretch making up the San Francisco Bay; an eerie distant amber glow emerged in the darkness off in the distance.  
“To El Cerrito?” he asked as the road straightened out.  
“No. I remember the Bay Area, but not this part, though.”  
Lars pulled up to a stop sign and hesitated for a few seconds before rolling forward down the street. They reached a second intersection and, just after the last house, he made a sharp right into the narrow driveway: the golden light from his headlights shone over the muted gray garage door. He lifted the parking brake and switched off the engine: the lights faded out into blackness in response.  
“This is it?” she asked.  
“Home sweet home. It's not much but it is home for me, though. The rent is good, I have a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, a place to clean myself up, and a fridge full of food now. That's pretty good for me.”  
They piled out of the car with the soles of their shoes clomping onto the hard driveway; Mia's eyes still had not adjusted to the darkness so she reached out for something, anything, to give her a clue.  
“Hang on, darling—”  
The soft padding sounds from his tennis shoes emerged from behind the hood of the car and to the spot right in front of her. There was a light squeaking noise, and then a lamp on the right of the garage door shone golden yellow light over her and the driveway. She blinked several times before she doubled back to the car to fetch her purse; she slung it over her shoulder right as he rounded the side of the car again to open the trunk for their bags.  
“I'll take mine,” she offered as he lifted his head from the trunk: he had slung both of their bags over both of his shoulders before shutting the lid.  
“No, no, I've got it,” he insisted as he led her up the walkway stemming from the driveway to the small front door.  
“So what should we do tomorrow?” she inquired him as he fumbled the keys for the right one.  
“Tomorrow?”  
“Yeah. It being your birthday and all.”  
“Well, since you're down here for a bit, I say we go visit my parents down in Oakland. I know they want to meet you—” The front door unlocked with the click of the dead bolt and Mia was greeted by the smell of bread from the inside of the house. Lars opened the door all the way before he turned on the lamp closest to the door. He rubbed his chin as he turned his attention back to her.  
“I will ask you this, though—could you turn off my night light for me, please?” He gestured to the lamp on the side of the garage.  
“Your night light!”  
“It is! It really is my night light!”  
She trotted back down the walkway and peered around the corner to spot the switch laying on its side right underneath the lamp; she flipped it the other way which brought darkness over the driveway. She returned to Lars, who held the front door for her while still keeping the bags over his shoulders. He shut it behind her as she entered the house and looked about the front room. To her left stood a tiny but comfortable looking muted red couch pressed up against the wall and nestled between two doorways: the one closest to her led to the small but cozy kitchen; between that doorway and the arm of the couch stood the small soft blue lamp with a cream colored lampshade. Right in front of her stood a small black leather recliner and then another door, which hung ajar by a few inches. But on her right stood a tall bookshelf with two shelves stocked full with records; next to the bookshelf stood a dusty old phonograph and above that, up on the wall was a series of bright and colorful paintings. Meanwhile, a large black tennis racket had been leaned against the far corner of the room, beneath the trimming of a tiny window with cream colored curtains. She glanced down at the soft light blue shag carpet and noticed he had vacuumed before he left.  
“Again, it is not much,” he repeated.  
“What is that smell?”  
He sniffled the air a bit.  
“Oh, my parents brought over some smørrebrød before I left the other day. I'm just glad it doesn't smell like—” He set the overnight bag on his left shoulder down on the floor next to him with a grunt inside of his throat.  
“Smell like what?”  
“—lutefisk. Incredible when cooked right but most other times, the smell of it is particularly nasty—especially for a Scandinavian such as myself—”  
He set down the other overnight bag before the closest arm of the couch. Once he peeled off his coat and lay it on the arm of the couch, he pointed at the far corner of the room.  
“Did you see that over there?”  
She turned her head at the sight of the tennis racket leaning against the corner.  
“I did!”  
He ambled across the room to pick it up and show her: the black tape on the handle glistened in the soft light for a moment before he held onto it. He held it up to his face to better show it to her.  
“This was going to be me,” he told her, waving the head around a bit, “following in my dad and my grandfather's footsteps. Obviously didn't happen, but I was going to be the third Ulrich man to do it, though.”  
“Three is a magic number,” she pointed out.  
“Indeed it is.” His cheek bones filled out with the incoming smile once again, while the pad of flesh underneath his chin expanded and grew rounder; he flicked his head back to move the tips of his bangs out from his eyes. She glanced down at his body and the bottom part of his shirt hugging his waist. Everything about him seemed rounder and fuller, even just a little bit, all from spending time together over the past few days. He cleared his throat as he bowed his head and eyed the outer edge of the tennis racket and the taut mesh of translucent strings making up the inside of the head.  
“So, er—remember when we were at the cabin and we had that huge orgy—and Jason spanked—was it Sonia with a dust pan?”  
“How could I forget?”  
His tongue poked out from one side of his mouth and slid to the other before he raised his gaze from the racket to her. The fluffy edges of his bangs obscured his eyebrows and cast faint shadows over his eyes.  
“You wanna spank me with that?” she suggested in a near whisper.  
“Only if you want me to.” He set the pad of his index finger on the top of the racket; he rotated his wrist to and fro so it looked as though he would twirl it around.  
“And I suppose you wanna take off your shirt, too,” she added.  
“Again, only if you want me to. I show you my big bloated body and then take you over my knee to spank you for being such a bad girl.”  
“A bad girl.”  
“Very, very bad. Rotten. Dirty. I'm fifteen pounds heavier now because of you. You are so bad.”  
She peeled off her coat and paused for a second while wondering what to do with her coat. She spotted his coat laying over the arm of the couch; she took three steps across the carpet to the arm of the couch before she removed her coat all the way and lay it over the top of his.  
“Do it, papacito rico. Do it.”  
The warm, sweet smile lifted in one corner to form a smirk. His tongue lapped out from his mouth as he strode towards her; she stooped over the back of the couch and lay her hands on the top.  
“I should tell you,” he began, twirling the racket in his hand, “on the way down, I thought that—since New Year's is not even a week away—you spend a few days down here with me and therefore, we can spend the eve of the new year in some place in Oregon. Some place you can show me and we can eat our way across it no less. I can drive you back up to lovely Portland if you like because I'd hate for you to hop on the plane again and again over the course of barely a week.”  
She peered back at him standing right behind her butt with the head of the tennis racket in hand.  
“That's even better!” she declared. “There's also the show Trent wants to take us to up in Seattle.”  
“Oh yeah, that's right! And you have to go back to work, too.”  
“I am working right now, baby boy.” She lifted a hand to wag a finger at him.  
“Okay, come here—you dirty little bitch—try fattening me up—oof, my tummy just rumbled—”  
“Do it!” she exclaimed. “Do it! Do it! Do it until the cows come home!”  
Next thing she knew, the clothed cheeks of her butt were met with a hard whack of the tennis racket: the meshed strings made a loud, ear splitting POP! when it hit the denim of her jeans.  
“God damn!” he declared.  
“Do it again! Do it again!”  
He took another swing at her butt, and that time the rim hit her in the back of the thigh. She yelped out at the sharp pain against her jeans, but he kept at it a few more times. Each time, the head of the racket made a loud POP in their ears; at one point, Lars chucked the racket onto the carpet and shoved her onto her back on the couch cushions; she could feel his crotch right over the crack in her ass. Two layers of fabric separated them.  
“Ride me until I have tears in my eyes, baby—until I piss my pants—”  
“I'd have to do your laundry, though,” he pointed out.  
“I don't care—just do it!”  
She felt his fingers creep around her waist to unbutton her jeans: she was amazed he could do it while she lay face down on the couch. He yanked down on the waist band to reveal her panties: he had peeled back the waist band there so he stared at her bare butt.  
“I'm gonna—I'm gonna—” She felt his hands grip onto her love handles and yank her back towards her. The feel of his fingers on her caused her heart to hammer away inside of her chest. “And just like that—I have my tennis balls back!”  
The sear of his open hand on her brought a sharp shriek out from her mouth. He spanked her, twice, and twice more, before he leaned towards her head.  
“I should be paying you to do this,” he growled in her ear.  
“Or maybe should I be paying you to do this?” she retorted. “I am the one with two jobs after all.”  
“Oh—fuck—fucking mama—”  
He lifted his head. There was a pause and then—the feel of a net upon her ass. He spanked her bare skin with his tennis racket. The cold metal from the rim on the back of her thigh sent shivers over her skin and up her spine. She could feel her nipples hardening inside of her bra.  
“Happy birthday to me!” he sang off key in between slaps. “Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to—” He stopped and Mia lifted her head.  
“What's the matter?”  
“I can't—I can't—I can't, I'm too hungry.”  
Mia groaned and buried her face in the couch cushion for a moment. She lay there against the inside of his left thigh before he spoke again.  
“Yeah—”  
She turned her head back to see him twirling the tennis racket in his hand: in the soft light and from that awkward angle, she could see it was spotless, as if he never took it out of the corner.  
“Yeah, these next few days, honey pie,” he told her.  
“Going to—deep dark places,” she croaked out in a husky voice.  
“Deep dark places and we are going to have fun.”


	48. Chapter 48

“I'm glad you took it easy on my overnight bag, because I brought a little something along with me,” she told Lars, following him out of the front room. He had taken to the short refrigerator in the kitchen and began to make himself a foot long sandwich on the smooth narrow counter top. Mia leaned her shoulder against the side of the doorway and folded her arms over her chest to watch him. All those leafy green vegetables, a smear of mayonnaise with brown mustard, followed by a crisp tomato sliced in near perfect slices, and then svelte slices of mozzarella over the produce, and rounded out with thick, smooth slices of pastrami which smelled of black pepper and smoke straight out of the top of an open flame somewhere in El Cerrito. While he made his sandwich, he cleaned up the counter using a clean dish towel to brush off the crumbs and the palm of his hand to catch them to dispose of them in the trash can; he also put everything back in its place once he had made use of them, topping off the whole process by putting away the pastrami in the drawer followed by closing the refrigerator door with his hip. He tossed his hair back and flashed her a playful little grin.  
“Wow, and I thought I had my way around the kitchen,” she remarked. He shrugged as he rinsed the smear of mayonnaise from the butter knife under the trickle of water out of the faucet.  
“Eh, I try my best,” he stated, turning off the faucet and drying off the knife before putting it back in the drawer. He then turned his attention to the sandwich on the counter.  
“I swear, you and those exotic meats,” she added, feeling the smile cross her face.  
“Hey, you know, I decided if it primes me up and gets me randy for my girl's pussy, I'll eat it.”  
Mia tilted her head forward at that; meanwhile, Lars took the first bite at the end of the sandwich and tilted his head back for a second with his eyes closed so as to take in all of the flavors right before him.  
“So what did you bring with you?” he asked her at one point, opening his eyes to where the irises were semi-circles.  
“My red lace, one of my teddies, and—a little of bit of the cake.”  
He swallowed, never lifting his eyelids.  
“My birthday cake?”  
“Of course. You think I would forget?”  
“I hope you wouldn't.”  
“I did not, baby boy.”  
He ran the tip of his tongue out of his mouth before he took another bite into the sandwich. She shifted her weight but never lifted her arms from her chest: she watched him eat up the sandwich in a manner of large bites following by slow chewing. She noticed that unless he was starving, if the dish was something he truly enjoyed, he ate at a slow, careful pace: the diametric opposite of Wayne who often ate like he was starving to death. Once he reached the middle of the sandwich, she cleared her throat again.  
“Maybe I should make dulce de leche tomorrow?” she requested. Lars swallowed the bite and raised his eyebrows at her.  
“Just for me? You would do that for me?”  
She shrugged and tilted her head to the side. “Perhaps if you want. But perhaps your parents would like some, too.”  
He closed his eyes and showed a warm smile. “Oh, I just pictured it drizzled over pandekager.” He lay a free hand over his stomach. “Nice and warm—speaking of which, that's like my one complaint with this sandwich here.”  
“Come again?”  
“Pandekager. It's like a—er, I'm sure you know what a crepe is.”  
“Of course.”  
“It's like our answer to France with their crepes. Nice and flaky and warm.”  
“You Danes and your warmth,” she teased him as he took another large bite of his sandwich.  
“Eh, it gets cold up there,” he pointed out with his mouth full. He swallowed it down. “Dark, too. Coincidentally, Puerto Rico is the diametric opposite.”  
“We do get hurricanes, though.”  
“Ah, yes, that's true. Where we have the blizzards and the deep freezes streaming down from the Arctic and Russia, you all have got the work of the tropics. Where we're freezing our asses off, you guys are sweating it out and trying to stay cool.” He took another bite, and then two more, and then stuffed the very end of it into his mouth; at that point, he closed his eyes and leaned against the counter. She watched him relax his body: he bent his right knee and brought it closer towards his left one but he never crossed his legs. He sighed through his nose and bowed his head so strands of his hair dropped over his shoulder: he had a curtain of hair cascaded over the right side of his head.  
“Feeling better?” she asked him in a soft voice.  
“Very much so.” He lifted his head and tossed his hair back over his shoulder. “Nice and warm and feeling my stomach growing little by little… so I know you've heard this from James a few times before—but, where's that cake?”  
She raised her eyebrows at that. “You want your cake now?”  
“Yes, please.” He lowered his eyelids again and showed her that inviting, come hither look again.  
“Would you like me to change my clothes, too?”  
He shrugged, never taking his hands off from the edge of the counter.  
“Yes,” he answered in a low croak. She licked her lips and cocked out her hip out further.  
“Wait here,” she told him, raising a finger to him. She darted back into the front room for her overnight bag and unzipped the flap on the top and took out the small white box which held the top tier of the cake, which she nestled against her clothes and her bottles of shampoo and conditioner. When he wasn't looking, she took the cake out of the refrigerator and slid off the bottom tier into the box; right underneath the box was her red lace panties and her black teddy. She placed the box on the couch cushion next to her then peeled off her shirt and rested it on their coats on the arm of the couch.  
She unhooked her bra which brought out her bare breasts to the cooler air in the house, and her nipples hardened and formed their points in response. She slipped the teddy over her body, and her nipples still poked out from underneath the soft smooth fabric; she took off her pants and folded them up before putting them back in the bag. She closed the bag before setting it back on the floor before the arm of the couch. Once she had fixed her hair, she cleared her throat and licked her lips again.  
“Come on in, papacito,” she called out to him.  
Lars padded into the room with his shirt hung over his right forearm as if it was a towel: the golden light from the lamp shone over his bare chest and his shoulder, all while accentuating the slight gentle curve on his belly. He showed her a sweet smile to make the plump soft flesh on his cheek bones filling out like ripe golden apples. Mia took her seat on the couch on the other side of the white box while he hung there before the two overnight bags with the light bathing over his sensual body. She crossed her right leg over her left knee to show him the back of her thigh. She examined the soft, round love handles over his hips and tossed her hair back from her neck.  
“Shall I grab a couple of forks?” he requested.  
“Por favor,” she told him, gesturing for him to do as he pleased; with the flick of his wrist, he tossed his shirt over into the seat of the chair before returning to the kitchen for a pair of silvery forks for himself and for her. Once he doubled back to lock the front door, he eased into his seat in the couch cushion next to the white box and her. He handed her one of the forks before he lifted the lid of the box so as to take a whiff of the cake inside.  
“Ah—decadent. Indulgent. I am going to be—a total man of leisure right now. Mind you, I'm already feeling kind of full from that sandwich, but I simply can't resist.”  
“Eat to your heart's desire, baby,” she whispered to him. He showed her a playful little smirk and then he sank the tines of his fork into the side of the cake and took a large bite out, covered in that soft silky frosting; he held a hand underneath the head of the fork before he stuck the fork into his mouth. Mia joined him on the other side, but with a slightly smaller bite. Every so often, he glanced up at her to flash her that look once again, that look where he wanted to make out with her on the couch once again and then take it a step further. At one point, he pointed his index and middle fingers to a spot on her chest, right over her right breast and the top hem of her teddy.  
“Hold still—you've got a little—”  
He brushed the frosting off of her skin then showed it to her right before her lips.  
“Lick the icing off, skat.”  
“Only if I get to blow out your candles in a bit—” she told him in a hushed voice.  
“Of course, honey pie.” He flashed her a wink and with that, her tongue slithered out of her mouth to caress along the side of his finger towards the soft pad making up the tip. She brought the frosting into her mouth with an almost feline curl to her tongue. He picked up his fork again for another bite of cake.  
“So—er, when's your little baking thing again?”  
“April. The fifteenth.”  
“Hm, so we may or may not be on tour then.”  
“And then we have—Astoria.”  
“Oh, yeah, that's right! You wanna take me up there when it gets nice again.”  
“Yeah, I do—also we have Trent's shindig soon—”  
“Perhaps we can hang out in Seattle for a while after that,” he suggested. “Other than our plans, I've got nothing else going on between Trent's thing and when we go back on tour, so maybe you and I can fit in another thing? I know Jerry and Layne want me to come up there, too. And Jerry does like you.”  
“Jerry likes me?” she asked, taking a bite of cake.  
“Indeed he does. So perhaps—I don't know, it's just a suggestion but maybe you can take a few days off around a certain day in February and we can have a little fun around then up in the Emerald City.”  
“We can see Soundgarden again,” she added.  
“And we can see Soundgarden again if they're around town, yes!”  
“And I can go back to the place where I bought my lingerie and the rope—I can show it to you.”  
That warm blush crossed over his cheek bones again.  
“Ooooh, okay! This just got interesting.”  
“By the way—what's Jason's deal? Because I know Kirk has Marcia and Sonia, and James has Ashley, but what about Jason?”  
“I'm not sure. He told me he really likes your boss at the bakery, Sandra, but I can't say for sure. That reminds me: I should ring up James at some point this evening…”  
They reached the halfway point of the tier when Lars leaned his shoulder against the back of the couch. Mia showed him a small smile.  
“Feeling full?”  
“Oh, yeah. I had that big sandwich, too—and those sausages and a couple of scones from the airline…” His voice trailed off as he shoveled in a few more bites: Mia pictured herself hand feeding him pasta with lots of sauce and fresh vegetables over at his parents' house the following evening, feeding him until his belly hung out over the waist band of his jeans, like a nice round Buddha. She also pictured herself slicing pineapples and having them candied before she slipped each slice into his mouth; all the while, she had tied him down to his chair so there was no escape from her feeding him and from the site of her feeding herself some of them. At one point, he rolled over onto his back and lay the back of his head against the top of the couch. She eyed his belly, which protruded out with a nice full curve. He parted his lips and let out a soft moan.  
She took a few more bites of cake before setting down the fork, and resting her elbow on the top of the couch, and then placing the side of her head in her hand.  
“I'm good for the night, too,” she told him in a soft voice.  
“I feel—big—and fat—and heavy—oh—oh Lord—”  
Mia climbed to her feet and ambled to the ajar door on the side of the room behind her, the door behind the recliner. She pushed open the door to reveal the narrow but cozy room, his room, with a small twin bed with a soft looking dark blue comforter and two fluffy pillows.  
She stood in the doorway before turning around to face him. He rolled his head to the side to look at her gesturing for him to follow her into the room. He shuffled his feet about on the carpet before he was able to lift himself into an upright position; he held onto his belly as he leaned to the side to turn off the light. The sole light came from the ambient light outside and so she could make out the faint outline of his figure staggering towards her. She reached out to hold him and guide him towards his bed, but he froze right there in the doorway.  
“Lay down, baby,” she encouraged him in a gentle voice. “Lay with me.”  
He groaned inside of his throat, and even though she couldn't see what he was doing, she knew he kept a hand on his belly.  
“Come on—I'll give you a rub as we go to sleep.”  
She felt the side of his head lay against her shoulder and she led him towards the side of his bed; using her free hand, she lifted the comforter up only to feel a fleece blanket and a bed sheet upon the mattress. She peeled those back to let him into bed first and then she followed, climbing over him to the side against the wall so they both lay on their left sides. Once he lay his head down on his pillow, she followed suit and tugged the covers over their bodies. She wrapped her arm around his warm, full waist; her fingers caressed over the taut skin on his belly and then she lay her hand right on the spot over his belly button. He was so warm and so soft to the touch—the roll of flesh over his hip cradled her arm like a small pillow—that it was enough to make her fall asleep.  
At some point, she awoke in the middle of the night to the feel of him climbing out of bed. She lay there with her eyes closed for several minutes before she felt the comforter and the blankets lift up from her arm; his hand tapped on the back of hers so he could lay back down again. Once he was back onto his side, she returned her arm to his waist.  
“Where'd you go?” she asked him in a broken voice.  
“Ate some more pastrami. I couldn't help myself. I brushed my teeth, too.”  
“I was going to say—you smell like pepper mint.”  
She kissed the side of his neck before laying her nose close to the base of his neck to take in the smell of his hair before falling back asleep.


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Our love is like water,  
> pinned down and abused  
> for being strange.  
> Our love is no other  
> than me alone  
> for me all day.  
> Our love is like water,  
> pinned down and abused.."  
> -"All Over You", Live

Mia awoke to the feel of soft warm flesh in her hands and the gentle aroma of Lars' hair brimming along the edges of her nostrils. The curvature of his belly and the silkiness of his love handles all underneath her right arm was enough to leave her wanting to stay in bed all day long. Her fingers spread across the skin upon his waist and the sprigs of hair along the rim of his belly button laid flat on his skin and right against the cup shape of her palm. Even by keeping her arm in place around his waist, she sensed it: he had once again grown slightly thicker overnight. The extra flesh coming in, right in over his hips and over the middle of his body. She could also feel herself growing rounder as his back felt rather hard compared to her belly.  
She puckered her lips and pressed them against the side of his neck. He further turned his head into the pillow and groaned inside of his throat at the feel of her kiss. She opened her eyes and the sight of soft gray light cast upon the other side of the room, and the back of his head right in front of her face.  
She ran the tips of her fingers in a circular motion around his belly button before moving her hand up towards the bottom of his chest. She kissed the side of his neck again.  
He groaned inside of his throat again; meanwhile, the front of her thighs fit into the smoothness of the backs of his thighs like a perfect mold. Her right foot brushed against the soles of both of his feet. She lay the palm of her hand on his belly and gave her fingers a gentle pulse.  
“Mmm, wha—” he croaked out, his lips parting to accommodate a deep exhale.  
“Good morning, baby,” she whispered into his ear. “Happy birthday.”  
He groaned inside of his throat yet again as she continued stroking his belly. His hand raised out from underneath the blankets so he could rub his eyes. They fluttered open and he twisted his neck back enough to see her out of the corner of his eye, and a smile crossed his face.  
“Good morning, beautiful,” he greeted back to her with a break in his voice.  
He rubbed his eyes with one hand again before he gestured for her to move towards the wall. She pressed her back up against the wall so he rolled over onto his back. He rolled his head over the pillow and flashed her a playful little grin. The tops of the blankets slid down from his shoulders a bit, and so she could see the incoming depth of his chest. She moved closer to him again, and lay her arm around his waist, and gave him a little kiss on the lips. She gazed into his eyes, and then his thick dark eyebrows over his prominent brow beneath the feathery edges of his bangs. His skin resembled smooth, sweet butter cream all around the surfaces of a birthday cake while his lips were as red as fresh ripe strawberries on the center piece: his face looked rounder and fuller with the double underneath his chin, much like the full moon. She lifted her hand from his waist and stroked the side of his face: she noticed droplets of moisture brimming his bottom eyelids.  
“Is everything okay?” she asked him in a gentle voice.  
“I am just missing Cliff a lot right now,” he confessed. “More so now than ever.”  
She raised her eyebrows at that; she ran the tip of her finger down the side of his throat and returned her gaze to his eyes once more.  
“Talk to me,” she whispered. “Please. I won't tell anyone if you want me to not say anything.”  
Lars sniffled as he shifted his weight in the bed. He closed his eyes and smacked his lips before speaking again.  
“You know—and I know I've said this before—I wonder about the two of us sometimes. And knowing Cliff isn't around us anymore makes me wonder about you and me even more.”  
“Go on.”  
He rubbed his eyes a third time and sighed through his mouth.  
“When he was killed, and the four of us attended his funeral with his dad, I thought to myself, 'from now on, I am going to live every day as if it was my last day on Earth.' And even though that has done wonders for me since then—I mean, I don't think I would have met you without having that in mind—but at the same time, I think it's from that thought—that very thought—that I feel old. You wouldn't think, but it does with me, and it also makes me painfully aware of it all around me, too. James and Kirk are getting older, Dave is getting older—and I'm getting older, too, and meanwhile Cliff has been left behind in late September. He lived his last day on that bus while here I am, behaving as if it's my last. He stagnated where I'm still going. Who am I to do such a thing to my dead friend.”  
She stroked his forehead to brush his bangs off from his skin; she leaned her head forward and pressed her lips to his lips again. That was all she could do right at that moment.  
“I'm twenty three today, darling,” he whispered to her in between kisses. “And yet—I feel thrice that age.”  
“I wish there was something I could do,” she confessed to him and he shrugged.  
“There isn't. All we can do is feel each other out as if we would never hold one another in our arms again. That said—” He cleared his throat before reaching up with his free hand again to rub the tip of his nose. “You know how last night I got up to get something to eat?”  
“How could I forget.” She grinned at him and he returned the favor with the soft spots of his face filling out as full as they could go with his smile.  
“Well, as I was falling asleep again, your arm on my body and your hand on my belly reminded me of melted butter dripping off of a warm fresh biscuit straight out of the oven, or the raspberry compote upon one of the danishes at your bakery. Darling, if only there was a way I could feel that duality of feeling full and the touch of your love upon me forever. I wish for your hands on every inch of me forever. I cannot even begin to describe the love I feel in my heart and in my stomach for your touch.”  
She lifted her hands to either side of his full face and gave him the lightest and softest of kisses she had ever given him: it was as if they both had been tickled by a fresh, melted caramel glaze.  
“Every time I kiss you,” she whispered back to him. “I feel us growing closer and I feel us growing closer with these beautiful bodies that we have here. Every kiss, every morsel, every drop in between us, it just brings us closer together. I have never felt so close to another person, be it my parents or any other boy in my past. I don't want to stop feeling you, either.”  
The pink blush returned to his cheek bones once more and that was when she placed yet another delicate little kiss on his lips.  
“Have all of this—this lovely feeling here—have it all go straight to my thighs, and have it thicken me up so much more than a dollop of sour cream ever could,” he whispered to her. She was about to kiss him again when a metal jingling sound emerged from the kitchen.  
“Is that my phone?” he asked aloud.  
“I think it is.”  
“Dammit. Really, dammit. Echh—I'll be right back—” He slid out from beneath the covers and clambered out of bed; Mia noticed he never took off his pants one time during the night but the denim hugged his thighs and his knees in a bit more snug fashion. She kept her eye on his lower back for the brief few seconds he was in the room before disappearing behind the door. The phone rang twice more before he picked it up.  
She rested the side of her head on her hand right next to his pillow; she stroked the top of the mattress where he had been laying with her right hand. The bed sheet was warm and toasty from his body; she bowed her head down towards the pillow to take in his smell again. She pictured the two of them having a shower together before they went to his parents' house that day. She also pictured him standing in the kitchen with the phone pressed to his ear and with one hand upon his hip to accentuate the shape of his body. Mia licked her lips at the thought of his body but she sighed through her nose at the thought of that soft look on his face.  
His voice floated in from the other room and she wondered who was on the other end. She couldn't tell what he was saying, but she did hear the soles of his bare feet padding across the floor. She lifted herself into an upright position and tossed her hair back from her face: she ran her fingers through her hair and decided she needed a shower before they left that morning. There was silence in the other room, followed by Lars saying something again and then the soft click of him hanging up the phone.  
He emerged from the kitchen and stood in the doorway before her, shirtless and with the waist of his jeans hugging his actual waist so she could see that he had indeed gotten a tiny bit heavier overnight; he also held a tiny piece of paper in one hand right next to his hip.  
“So that was Trent—he got my number from Kirk and I guess there's some kind of little party going on up at Marcia and Sonia's house right now because there was a little sound of love making right behind him.”  
“Oh, really?”  
“Yeah. I dunno if it was Marcia or Sonia, but yeah—Kirk was—was really going at it behind Trent. Perhaps it was both of them and one of them was being silent, I have no idea. But anyways, the little thing he's got planned for us in January has a date now.” He showed her the piece of paper in his hand.  
“And?”  
“It is on the seventeenth.”  
“The seventeenth!”  
“Yeah, and he told me it's a Saturday, too. On Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, which means you don't have to spend so much time off from work and without money for yourself, either. I also quickly wrote down all main the bands playing there—let's see, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Green River, Malfunkshun, the Melvins, and Screaming Trees. A couple of lesser known ones are March of Crimes—that's Ben's band—and L7, and he added you might like them because they're all women.”  
Her face lit up at the sound of it the news, especially upon hearing about L7. But this meant the two of them could start planning out their trip to Astoria, that is if he knew the date about the next stint of their tour. He tossed his hair back again and ran the tip of his tongue along his lips.  
“So, since I'm out of bed, and you're sitting up now, do you wanna… have a little nosh of breakfast first before we go to my parents? Or should we do something else?”  
“Well, I was thinking of taking a shower first,” she suggested.  
“Oh? Perhaps—I can join you?”  
“If you would like, papacito.”  
“'Cause—you know—I'd hate to spend so much water and so much time in order to take one for myself—”  
Mia ran her tongue along the edges of her teeth. He clasped his hands together right over the middle of his body, right over the spot between his lower belly and his chest.  
“—and, you know, don't have to clean up afterwards. Just have all that warm water wash over your beautiful, wet cunt for me.”  
She clambered out of bed and took three whole steps towards him, and flashed him a devious but frisky smirk.  
“I'll get my shampoo and my conditioner,” she suggested in a soft voice, feeling her vagina twitch at the sight of his body. “And then when we're done, we can have a little bite to eat before going over there.”  
He ducked out from the doorway so as to take off his pants and to let her go to her overnight bag for her things; before crouching over to take the bottles out from the inside, she peeled off her teddy so she stood there before his couch almost naked save for her panties. She fished the bottles of shampoo and conditioner out of her bag and returned to him right as he tossed his jeans over the top of the recliner.  
A low, prolonged growl escaped from his belly as they started towards the bathroom door on the right side of the couch.  
“Let's make this quick then,” she suggested as he led her into the room and clicked on the light on the ceiling.  
She placed the bottles on the low cream colored shelf right over the smooth white bathtub so she could take off her panties and place them onto the counter top; he followed suit before switching on the shower head with the dual dials on the wall of soft blue tiles. The water streamed out of the head in a series of strings arranged in a spiral shape: he held his hand underneath the water to check the temperature. He adjusted the dial on the left and brought the water up to warmth.  
He climbed inside of the tub first and then, careful not to slip himself, he took her hand to help her inside the tub. Once she had closed the pearly white curtain, he wrapped his arms around her waist and planted a kiss on her lips as the warm water cascaded against the sides of their heads from a diagonal. He pressed her close to his body so as to keep themselves from slipping on the wet floor of the tub. Her hands caressed down the curvature of his spine towards his hips and his incoming love handles. She felt a little damp in between the legs, but she didn't mind. She was more than happy to hold him and kiss him against the flow of warm water; the tips of his bangs dripped over their noses and their lips, and so she reached up to push them out of his face. Water trickled down the side of his torso towards his waist and soon they were cradled by the endless stream of liquid warmth.  
He was about to inch back towards the wall when a loud thud underneath them caught their attention. They both glanced down at the bar of soap sliding towards the drain.  
“Could you get that?” he asked her over the rush of water.  
“Yeah—” she spat out some water as she stooped over to pick it up from the bottom of the tub; it was difficult from the rushing water but she managed to scoop it up from the floor of the tub. He reached to his right for the wash cloth and took the soap and rubbed it against the cloth. He rubbed it all around his neck, and shoulders, and then down his chest before he massaged it over her upper body as well.  
“Are you warm enough? I noticed your girls are a little bit pointy.”  
“Oh, yeah. And you know why they're pointy, too.”  
“Oh, I see.” Through the stream of water, she could see him flash her a wink. Lars then took the cloth and rinsed it off before soaping it up again to clean his face, and then followed suit with her. They both bowed their heads under the water to rinse off and let the soap trickle down their legs towards their ankles and their feet. Mia inched around so the water flowed over the curvature of her butt and in between her legs. Lars kept his hand pressed to her lower back as she arched her back so as to lean forward and let it trickle down towards the lips of her clitoris: it wasn't like having the shower head right up against her but it did tickle her. Wet strands of dark hair dropped down from the back of her head; she kept her eyes on his narrow feet and his slender, sinewy ankles. She remembered she needed to finish out those body kisses from their visit at the cabin, but she also knew her head was an inch from the shaft and the head of his dick at that moment. She reached forward for the bottle of conditioner and squirted a dollop into the palm of her hand. She rubbed her hands together and massaged her coated fingers into her hair, making sure not a single drop went to waste.  
She stood upright and faced him so she could run her fingers and her hands through his hair. He tilted his head back and showed her his neck as she massaged his scalp. His eyes rolled towards the back of his head as she tugged and caressed against the roots of his hair. She smiled and giggled at the euphoric expression on his face.  
“You like that?”  
“I'll give you ten years to stop that,” he confessed, clearing his throat. She then ran her fingers through his hair over his shoulders before returning to his scalp one last time. She rinsed off her hands before pressing them to his chest and giving him another kiss on the mouth. Streams of water dripped down the side of his face as she caressed the side of his neck with two tips of her fingers: she noticed tiny drops clinging to his eyelashes and to his lips. The conditioner in his hair made him look as though she and him were washing off after the same thing Kirk and the Bennetts were doing up at the house.  
“Think I need a bigger shower,” he admitted.  
“So you can have a seat,” she added.  
“So I can have a seat, exactly! Have a seat and hold you. I need a bath mat and a little lube, too. I do like this, though—you and me under a shower's head.” He winked at her again before they both tilted their heads back to rinse out the conditioner. However, she would massage his head again when she washed them both down with the shampoo. They rinsed off one more time before he switched off the water. He flicked his head back to get his soaking wet bangs out of his eyes and Mia put her arms around his waist again. She kissed his wet lips and took in the soft, clean musk from the skin on his face.  
“You smell good,” she told him, her voice echoing over the walls of the shower.  
“So do you. You know what else smells good?”  
“Muffins? Cake?”  
“Yes and yes! Come on, darling—let's dry off.”


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's my birthday, so I made sure this one was extra sweet xoxo

Torben and Lone's house sat upon the corner of an inclined street within Marin Heights, several minutes north of El Cerrito: a tiny ivory white house with a pitch black roof nestled inside of a cluster of scraggly dark trees which stood out against the brownish grass blanketing the hills. Right around the bend from the house was a vast view of the San Francisco Bay.  
When Lars and Mia climbed out of his car at the curb, a chilly breeze swept over their soaking wet heads; he set his arm around her as they ambled up the walkway to the front step. He raised a hand and knocked on the panel four times. There was a brief silence, then the door opened to reveal Torben Ulrich, a taller, elder gentleman with sprigs of silver hair lining his temples and all over his dark brown hair, pale but creased skin, a long silvery beard extending down to his collar bones, and black beetles for eyes, the corners of which crinkled up with his greeting smile.  
“Hello, son,” he greeted him in a broken voice; he eyed Mia and turned his head to the side a bit. “Who is this lovely lady?”  
“Dad, this is that girl I was telling you and Mum about last week—this is Mia.”  
As she reached out to shake his head, Torben took her hand to kiss the back then hold it with both hands for a moment all while gazing into her eyes.  
“Ah, the lovely, infamous Puerto Rican baker,” he greeted her and she felt her face grow warm.  
He gestured for them to come inside the cozy warm front foyer. Mia saw the house resembled much like the house back up in Portland, except the entrance to the living room stood to the left of the hall while the kitchen was down the hall and on the right side. She glanced down to see a hard black tile floor which extended towards the back of the house, meanwhile the living room had a soft looking gray and black carpet underneath a plush looking rich red couch and matching love seat next to a pale brick hearth. The soft aroma of bread baking blanketed the whole front of the house.  
Once Lars and Mia had stripped off their coats and hung them up on the hooks behind them, a short squat woman appeared from the doorway of the kitchen to greet them; she had a short bob of salt and pepper hair, milky skin which too had incoming creases, that same prominent brow and cheek bones, and those same bright green eyes. She beamed at all three of them as she approached them with her arms extended.  
“Oh, Lars, min kære dreng—”  
“Yes, hello again, Mama—” he greeted her with a warm smile. She put her arms around his waist and the side of her head against his chest, while he held her close to his body; Mia watched his eyes close like those on a kewpie doll while Lone's hand stroked over his hips and his back.  
“Warmest hug ever,” she breathed out as she let go of one side of him so she could give him a loving pat on the belly. She eyed Mia, who clasped her hands before her waist as if she was awaiting the same, vicious tongue lashing she got from her parents at her house.  
“Mum, this is that girl I was telling you both about—this is Mia.” Lone whispered something into his ear; he raised his eyebrows and squinted his eyes for a second and then the corners of his mouth spread over his face to form a small smile. He nodded his head at her and then Mia knitted her eyebrows together.  
“She called you beautiful,” he told her in a low voice and accompanied with a wink. Torben then rubbed his hands together.  
“So, er—what brings you kids here to our humble abode on this morning? Oh, and happy birthday, my boy! Before I forget!”  
Lone gave him another hug.  
“Ah, yes! Thank you—er, I just wanted to bring her here to meet the two of you and—and we were wondering if we could have breakfast here. If that's alright.”  
“Of course, skat!” she declared, dropping her arm down to his lower back so her hand rested right over his hip. “You know you can always drop by and have a bite to eat—” She gave him another hug around the waist and he kept his arm around her.  
“And she can always come along, too,” added Torben, gesturing to Mia, “—perhaps help with the baking.”  
The light ding! of a timer emerged from the kitchen and Lone gasped and showed them the glimmer in her eye.  
“Croissants are ready!”  
She let go of Lars and darted back down the hall to the kitchen; Torben followed her to help out, and in turn leaving Lars and Mia alone in the front of the house. She peered over at him right as he ran a hand through his hair and let out a low whistle through his parted lips.  
“Explains everything doesn't it?” he asked her.  
“Indeed it does! Wait, your mom's making croissants?”  
“Apparently so. I have—always loved her baking, especially on Christmas morning and the morning of my birthday, too. When I came here last week, she noticed me with this little thing here—” He set a hand on his belly. “—Mia, you know me, I absolutely love being touched and being held, but I swear to God, I could not get her off of me.”  
“Kept rubbing you and stuff?”  
“Oh, yeah. All the 'oh, honey, you're getting so big and so soft and yet so strong…' At one point—I'm not even kidding—she had her hand on my belly for about twenty minutes straight, and she told me, 'you are going to get so much thicker before I'm done'. I ate so much that night, too. Just to feel that warmth and her love inside of me.”  
Mia licked her lips at the sound of that.  
“Do you have any idea how sexy you are to me right now?” she asked him in a hushed tone. He raised an eyebrow at her but then his nose twitched and he sniffled the air.  
“You smell that?”  
Mia closed her eyes to sense it for herself. Something sweet, sugary, and fruity.  
“Strawberries?”  
He sniffled again then closed his eyes to better pick up the smell.  
“Sugar—candied strawberries. Some kind of meat, too—”  
Torben leaned out from the entrance of the kitchen to gesture them inside the room.  
“Come along, kids!”  
Lars nodded at her before taking her hand to guide her into the small, cozy but bright kitchen with the pale cabinets and a heavy wooden table with folding ends and four spindly chairs. The two of them helped set the table with the candied strawberries on the slender wooden skewers, a big white china bowl filled with blueberries and blackberries, the fresh sliced panchetta, and of course, the flaky golden croissants straight out of the oven. Torben poured himself and Mia cups of coffee while Lone and Lars took cups of black tea before taking their seats next to one another at the table.  
Mia could not recall the last time she had a croissant so warm and buttery: the ones at the bakery could not hold a candle to these ones. The strawberries, on the other hand, were divine: fresh, succulent, and not to mention, with the right amount of sweetness. She remained silent to focus on the food before her: it was all so simple and to the point, and yet it was exactly how Lars described it in that she started to feel warm, as if being hugged from the inside.  
“Lars,” said Torben at one point, “I don't know how to say this, but—”  
He was about to take a sip from his white tea cup when he gazed on at his father, who stroked his beard in thought.  
“—is it—shake your booty?”  
Lars' face turned bright pink at the sound of that. Mia chuckled in response. “Shake your booty?”  
“Sheek yer booty.”  
Mia giggled and brought a hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter, or to keep herself from choking on the blackberries. Lone flashed her a playful grin of star's teeth.  
“It's 'ass', Dad,” insisted Lars in a hushed voice. “Shake your ass.”  
“No, I was trying to think of the Frank Zappa album.”  
“Oh! That's—er—Sheik Yerbouti.”  
“Sheik Yerbouti, that's it! And watch your mouth, too. Not in front of your mother or the lady.”  
“Dad, I'm twenty three. Twenty three and fully aware of what resides beneath my waist.”  
“Well, you know what this means, right?”  
“What's that?”  
“She's gotta—” Torben leaned closer to Lars' ear and whispered something with his hand protecting the side of his mouth; Lars' mouth dropped open right then and his face turned as red as the candied strawberries before them.  
“Dad!” he blurted out, his voice breaking.  
“What'd he say?” demanded Mia as Torben burst into laughter.  
“Y-You don't wanna know,” he sputtered, trying to hide his face with his tea cup but the blush on his cheek bones only darkened in response.  
“You really don't,” Torben assured her as he took a sip of black coffee. Lars set down his cup and reached for a few slices from the platter of panchetta. He slipped a small slice into his mouth before he set three more on his plate and rested his hands upon the edge of the table. As he chewed up the slice, the pinkish blush persisted over his cheek bones and a soft groan emanated from inside of his throat. His chest heaved, and his shoulders slumped, and he could not keep the pleasured smile from crossing his face.  
“What's wrong, son?” asked Torben.  
“Nothing, it's just—this is delicious. Mmm, ooh—oh, my—”  
Lone took a concerned glimpse at him.  
“Your face is getting flushed,” she pointed out, “and—you are breathing fast! Are you sure you are alright?”  
“Positive.” He swallowed and let out a sigh from his open mouth. Mia squinted her eyes at him as she brought her mug up to her mouth. She watched him take another bite of panchetta, all while he kept an eye on her. She took a sip of coffee, set down the mug, and cleared her throat.  
“Lars, may I have a word with you in the other room?” she asked in a light, almost girlish voice.  
“Of course,” he replied, bringing a hand to his mouth out of politeness. She stood to her feet and ducked out of the kitchen down the hall; she peered behind her to see him following right behind her. He gestured down the hall to the linen closet before the far end; she halted right before those two wooden sliding doors—the one on the left of which hung ajar by about an inch—and turned around to see him still chewing up at that bite with a smile on his face. He set his hands on the lower part of his shirt.  
“I have a question,” she began in a near whisper, sliding her hands around his waist. He swallowed and gazed into her face with a twinkle in her eye.  
“Go ahead,” he breathed out.  
“When did you start feeling aroused every time you eat?”  
“Like—just two nights ago when we were at the house. It's a fairly new feeling. But it is indeed there—it is there with all the cured meats, for the most part anyways. Pastrami, panchetta, your absolutely sexy chorizo—”  
“I see—papacito.”  
She held him closer to her as she moved in for a deep kiss that tasted of croissant and panchetta. It was going to making love in the hallway again until she opened her eyes to look into his, and noticed something out of the corner of her eye. She stopped and turned her head to see, inside that one inch opening, a small stack of narrow bindings tucked behind a stack of towels on the third shelf.  
“What's the matter?” he asked her in a low voice.  
“What's this?” She reached out to touch it with the tips of her index and middle fingers. Despite the narrow width of the spines, she could see small black lettering to form out titles, some of which had letter “o”s with slashes through them and combined letter “a”s with “e”s.  
“Oh, shit, I totally forgot that was here,” he confessed, blushing again. “—er, let's just say—when you're not around, or whenever I have had a few moments alone, I—erm—explore myself.”  
“Oh, I see.” She brought her hand back to his body, this time upon his chest.  
“It's all in Danish anyways—I would have to teach you.”  
She brought her lips closer to his face for another deep kiss but he lifted his head up from her mouth.  
“No, no, no, not at my parents' house. Well, not when they're three feet away from us, anyway.” He winked at her and followed it up with a little grin. She let go of his waist and tossed her hair back before they headed back to their seats at the kitchen table. Lars ran a handed through his bangs before he took another sip of tea.  
“So what's the plan for you kids?” asked Torben.  
“Well,” started Lars, setting down the cup before taking another bite of croissant, “—she and I are going on a little road trip in the next day or so. We're going to spend New Year's in her home town of Portland.”  
“Oh, how fun!” said Lone. “Send us post cards, baby.”  
“Of course, Mum. Always. That reminds me, too—did the two of you get the one from me, James, Kirk, and Cliff when we were back home this past summer?”  
“We did.” She reached out to touch the back of his left hand.  
“You mother and I keep it in a safe place in our bedroom so we won't lose it.”  
Lone turned her head to Mia right then.  
“So, what about you, Miss Mia? What's your story? We already know you are from absolutely spectacular Puerto Rico and you bake and cut hair, but what about your family?”  
Mia shifted her weight in her seat. Those words from her parents from the other night still cut right through her like a sharp knife. She thought of calling them at the nearest phone if and when she found the opportunity, but she doubted a message from her at the moment would sooth things over between them.  
“Her parents are crazy,” Lars filled in for her.  
“Oh—” Lone cooed, stroking her arm.  
“Yeah, we—we got into a big argument the other night. He heard it, too.”  
“Yeah, it was—it was just nuts.”  
“And it's such a break to the heart, too, because I have always been close with my parents. I became a baker because of them. I want to go to Cordon Bleu because of them.”  
“Cordon Bleu, really!” exclaimed Torben.  
“What's keeping you from going there?” asked Lone. Mia gestured to Lars, who raised his eyebrows at her.  
“Me!”  
“The day you walked into the bakery,” she confessed. “I also worked too hard to get that job and my other one at the salon, too.”  
Lars ran his tongue along the top of his bottom lip before speaking up again.  
“What if I told you,” he started, “to go for it and that I can come back to Europe with you? When we start making a lot more money from our music, I'll get another house in France. If nothing, I can move back to Europe.”  
“You—You would do that?” she asked him.  
“Of course. Whatever dream you have, I'll be right behind you on it.”  
“But what about James? And Kirk? And Jason?”  
“Mia, trust me when I say this. I see the four of us going places. I see the four of us rising up. You know how earlier this morning I told you I live every day as if it was my last? Well, that means I take a risk when it presents itself. I took a risk when I took my seat behind the drum kit and so far, it is paying off. And therefore—when I see us rising up and doing well, I want you to be able to follow your heart and whatever your life calls out. I can always come back to the Bay Area, just how you can always come back to Portland. But Europe will always be home to me and France is calling you. I am behind you every step of the way, darling. And I know James would do the same for Ashley. Kirk and Marcia and Sonia, I'm not sure mainly because there's three of them.”  
“I am, too,” added Torben.  
“Make that three of us,” said Lone, the corners of her eyes crinkling with her smile. Mia glanced around the table at the three of them; she fixated on Lars for a few extra seconds to watch him pick a second croissant.  
“I—I don't know what to say,” she confessed, glancing at Torben and Lone once more, “other than—thank you. All three of you. And to James, and Kirk, and of course Jason.”  
“Oh, yeah, we can't ever leave Jason out of this,” said Lars; he turned to Lone and gestured to the white porcelain dish in the center of the table. “Could you pass me the butter, Mum?”


	51. Chapter 51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Don't you wanna come with me?  
> Don't you wanna feel my bones on your bones?  
> It's only natural.  
> Don't you wanna swim with me?  
> Don't you wanna feel my skin on your skin?  
> It's only natural."  
> -"Bones", The Killers

Lars lay down on the couch in the living room with his pants unbuttoned and the bottom hem of his shirt pulled up over his belly button. Meanwhile, Mia stepped into the room with a hand over stomach and a warmth inside of her; she stood over his head and pressed her hands to her hips. He had his eyes closed and the back of one hand pressed to his forehead; his other hand lay on his hip on an incline so his fingers curled inward. Part of his bangs had slid back towards the crown of his head and the arm of the couch; his lips were bright red from drinking those two cups of tea.  
She thought of stroking that slender stripe of exposed skin on his waist, touching those hip bones and running the tips of her fingers down the line of hair from his navel to the band of his underwear, but she just wanted to look at his body laying there on the couch for a moment before she crouched down next to his head. She examined the side profile of his face until he opened his eyes and, without moving his head, took a glimpse over at her. He showed her a little smile.  
“I don't want to get up,” he said after clearing his throat.  
“You did well, baby,” she whispered to him, looming close to the side of his face as he closed his eyes again; he swallowed and the flesh under his chin swelled out a bit. She eyed the gentle curve rising up from the bottom of his chest towards his hips, that curve indicative of having eaten well that morning.  
“Would you like a little rub?” she sweetly asked.  
“Not here, anyways,” he mouthed; she recalled those kisses she needed to give him from the belly down towards his feet.  
“Would you like a kiss?”  
“Yes, please.”  
She leaned towards his waist and placed her lips to the very top of his hip bone.  
“Oh—” he gasped at the feel of the delicate skin on her lips. She glanced up at his face turning bright pink once again.  
“Come on, baby—you're a drummer. You have got to take care of yourself from the waist down, you know.”  
“My arms need care, too,” he pointed out.  
“I'll get there, I'll get there—” she promised him in a light voice. She gave him another kiss on the hip, followed by two more: light brushes upon the soft smooth skin covering his hard pelvic bone. His lips pouted open and his chest heaved as he gasped to breathe: every other breath that came out of his mouth was a short soft moan. The shower they had had that morning left his skin feeling smooth like heavy cream: every kiss for her only made want to kiss him even more. The muscles in his neck tightened but she kept at it right there on his hip until she moved her mouth over to his underbelly.  
She peered up at his face and the sight of his eyes rolling up towards the back of his head.  
“That's it, baby,” she whispered, giving him a small kiss on the spot on his skin right under his belly button.  
“My—My parents are in the other room,” he stammered in a hushed voice.  
“And? Trent called you while Kirk was going at it with either Marcia or Sonia.” She gave him another kiss in the same spot.  
“Yeah, but—” He gasped at the feel of her lips there; she pushed back his shirt to expose his belly some more. He shook his head as she lifted herself up over his torso: she pressed her left hand to the back of the couch and her right hand on the edge of the cushion, right next to his shoulder, in order to steady herself. She hovered over his body and came face to face with him. She loomed over his gaping mouth and the tip of his nose: she picked up the herbal smell of black tea and the sweet smell of the strawberries on his breath.  
“Please, darling—not at my parents' house—not when they are so close to us. You know I love this more than anything—I mean, when you were kissing me on the hip just now, I could feel myself getting weak—and I feel so light, and I want to give ourselves to one another but—”  
“But what?” she asked, keeping her voice gentle. He swallowed down his discomfort.  
“I'm afraid.”  
“What is it that are you afraid of, baby?”  
“I don't want them to walk in on us. I mean—it's one thing with your best friends around, but not my parents.”  
“But I want to touch you and feel you, though.” Her arms started to quiver at the elbows but she tried to keep herself suspended over his body to keep herself from falling onto him.  
“I know. And I know I want you to love and feel me, too. It's just—you know.”  
“Can I still kiss and touch you?”  
“Of course. I love it when you kiss me, and kiss me again. And then touch me, and touch me again, and again, and again, and again—”  
He didn't finish because her left elbow quivered so much that she lost her grip upon the back of the couch. Even though she caught herself by setting her hand on the cushion next to his head, she still fell over his chest and she could feel the soft flesh of his belly pressed against her. She was laying on top of him; his eyes widened at the sight of her at first and then he grimaced at the feel of her.  
“Not really the best thing when you've got two full bellies right on top of each other,” he grunted out.  
“Are you sure?” she asked, peering down at her breasts which had pressed right upon his chest. She flashed back on the time they had sex on Olivia's couch, and she gazed into his face before her with it lodged right in her mind. He blinked several times at her with a puzzled expression upon his face.  
“Actually—I do kind of like this,” he confessed, trying to breathe. “This is—actually quite nice. Having you on top of me like this.”  
“Our chests lined up—”  
“Our chests are lined up, and so are our hips, and I feel full but I'm not like—swollen full. So it's—” He took in a deep inhale as he gazed into her eyes. “—it's—this is actually kinda hot.” He cracked her a smile and she giggled at him, but then their eyes locked.  
She lifted her left hand from the cushion to stroke his face.  
“Do you remember Olivia's house?”  
“How could I forget?”  
“I lay down on the couch and you just went right to it.”  
“Ho boy, did I ever.”  
“But this is different.”  
“It doesn't have to be.” Mia raised her eyebrows at that.  
“Oh, don't play with me like that, papacito.”  
“Why? You do it to me all the time.”  
“Except I am the one with the cunt whereas you're the one with the cock.”  
“True. But still, though.”  
“Kids?” Torben called out from the next room over.  
“Shit.” Lars closed his eyes while Mia raised herself off of his body and stood back onto her feet on the floor next to him. She ran her fingers through her hair while he let out a low whistle through his parted lips then raised himself into an upright position. He yanked his shirt down to his waist and, once he climbed onto his feet, buttoned his pants back up. Torben stepped into the room with a few folded over fleece blankets in his arms.  
“What's this?” asked Lars.  
“Take these blankets with you.”  
“Thank you, Dad, but I have blankets and I am sure she does, too.”  
“No, no, I insist. Your mother and I want you kids to be as warm and dry as possible while you make that long trip back.”  
Lars glanced over at Mia, who nodded her head in affirmation.  
“It is six hundred miles after all,” she pointed out.  
“Okay, okay, we'll take these—also, do either you or Mum know where I can get a bath mat?”  
“A bath mat? Like the thick one your grandmother always had in her shower?”  
“That exact one.”  
“I'm not sure, but keep your eye out for one, though. You kids sure you don't want to hang around a bit longer?”  
“Not unless you and Mum are doing something today.”  
“Sadly, we're not. Alright then, son—” Torben flung his arms around Lars' body; Mia watched him close his eyes as he lay his head on his father's chest for a moment. He then turned to her for an embrace and for a split second, she thought Torben was going to smother her with his body. He gazed into her face with a big beaming smile on his face.  
“It was so lovely meeting you, darling,” he told her.  
“Let's do it again,” she suggested.  
“Yes, let's,” said Lars with a wink.  
The three of them headed out to the foyer when Lone trotted out of the kitchen with her arms extended. She squeezed Lars tight against her body and then held his face in her hands.  
“Oh, min søde lille dreng. Have fun, honey.”  
“Of course, Mama—” She kissed both of his cheeks before giving him another loving pat on the belly and letting him go; she turned to Mia to embrace her, too.  
“Take care of him, sweet heart,” she whispered into her ear.  
“As you wish,” she replied.  
And with that, Lars tucked the blankets in between his legs so he could help Mia put her coat back on; he then bundled back up before he tucked the blankets underneath his arm. With one last wave good bye, they left the house and returned to his car; he lay the blankets in the back seat behind him before climbing in behind the wheel. They both shivered once they shut the doors at the same time.  
“Wow, it's cold,” she stated.  
“Yeah, I'll say. I see we chill for a bit at my place for a bit before we hit the road,” he suggested.  
“That's a good idea—it is a lot of driving after all.”  
“Alright, so Dad said to keep an eye out for any place that sells bath mats. But then again, I don't believe we will be doing it in the shower again any time soon—unless you wanna when we get back to your house in the city of roses.” He winked at her as he took his keys out from his coat pocket.  
“We will see how it goes, chico hermoso,” she answered with a lick of her lips. He started up the car and they rolled away from the curb to head back to El Cerrito. They sat in silence for a bit before Mia cleared her throat and spoke up again.  
“Wait a minute, what about James and Ashley?”  
Lars took a quick glimpse at her. “What about James and Ashley?”  
“Ashley starts school again in about a week or so.”  
“Oh, shit. I should've thought of that before we left the house. I'll have to call him.”  
“But what if she told him? I'm sure she told him.”  
“Yeah, that's true, now that I think about it. So—referring back to earlier, and those lovely little kisses you left on my hip, of all places…”  
“Yes? And?”  
“I'm not even going to sugar coat it. That had to have been one of the hottest things I've ever felt in my life. And then you pressing your body against me like that after that—” He lowered his voice to a soft croak. “I really meant it, too: it was hot. Really, I was starting to get kind of hot and bothered right there on my parents' couch.”  
“But you kept refusing because you didn't want us to get caught.”  
“Exactly. But—all things aside—” He paused as they rolled up to a stop light. He turned his head to look at her with that same glance he gave her whenever he ate a lot of something.  
“—that's something else to play with after we stuff each other's faces.”  
“Kiss each other's bones.”  
“Kiss each other's bones.”  
The light turned green and they proceeded on back to Lars' house. He parked the car at the curb, and killed the engine, and tossed his hair back from his face.  
“It's gonna be a long trip, darling,” he stated.  
“Not unless you and I are willing to do such a thing together.”  
“What, you want me to stiffen my thumb with your sugar?”  
She laughed at that.  
“No. No, no, no, no. Not unless you want that as soon as possible. But I meant let's take turns as we drive.”  
“I—meant—that—too.”  
She burst out laughing again as she unfastened her seat belt before climbing out of the car into the chilly morning. Lars soon followed her out of the car; he opened the car door to pick up the bundles of blankets in the back seat. She heard the sound of ripping fabric and he lifted his head from the car doorway with that blush back over his face.  
“Uh-oh, oh shit.”  
“Was that what I think it was?” She started laughing again.  
“It—It was. Like the worst place for that to happen, too, oh my God—”  
He held the blankets under his arm as he closed the door with his hip. When he rounded the rear end of the car with the wind blowing his hair back from his face, Mia noticed him holding the seat of his pants with his free hand and she laughed even harder.  
“Don't laugh! Don't you dare laugh!” he scolded.  
“It's just one step away from me kissing your bones again,” she promised him with a lick of her lips.  
“Right. Right, that—but—em—”  
“What?”  
“I have no idea where I was going with that. But that's two other things I have got to do before we leave: change my pants and weigh myself.”  
“Oh, boy.”  
“Yeah, who knows how much I put on while laying there on the couch…”


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'm travelin' down the road and I'm flirtin' with disaster,  
> I've got the pedal to the floor, my life is running faster.  
> I'm out of money, out of hope, it looks like self-destruction.  
> Well, how much more can we take with all of this corruption."  
> -"Flirtin' with Disaster", Molly Hatchet

Lars had locked up his house within a few hours of returning: since New Year's Eve was five days away, and they had nothing better to do there in El Cerrito, he and Mia agreed on leaving in the middle of the afternoon and stopping overnight in Crescent City, three hundred and fifty miles away. Thus they loaded up the trunk of his car with their overnight bags, some food out of his refrigerator, and the rest of Lars' birthday cake. She promised to take over the driving duty for the next day as she knew the way back up to Portland better. So far, they had taken the Pacific Coast Highway north out of the Bay Area in a two hundred mile straight shot towards Eureka, “otherwise, we're just looking at over two hundred miles of absolutely nothing if we take the 80 towards Sacramento and then go up to Redding—at least this way we've got the Redwoods to drive through,” as he described it.  
“I'd rather look at the ocean, too,” she agreed.  
“The ocean and Wine Country, too,” he added. “You also can't really see those inland volcanoes in the dark, either.”  
Rows of vineyards ran past the highway all the way up to Santa Rosa and throughout the valley up to Ukiah: every so often, a single cluster of dark evergreen trees and low shrubs sprouted up from the monotony. Lars put in the Led Zeppelin album Physical Graffiti for those hundred miles, but at the albums' end, he told her about his weigh in at the house.  
“Three pounds. Three fucking pounds. Just from laying there on the couch.”  
“Oh, come on,” she scoffed, “it's probably just water weight.”  
“Yeah, that's what they always say. 'It's just water weight.' My belly doesn't lie, though.”  
She rolled her eyes and flashed him a smirk. “And for the umpteenth time, you are not fat. You're cute and you've got a little bit of nice curve to your body now.”  
“Hey, now, you have nice curves. I'm just a pretty boy.”  
“Oh, come on—!”  
As the valley became more mountainous, those same trees and bushes had strewn about the rain drenched hills, the sun hung low over the foothills separating them from the Pacific Ocean, and Lars' stomach turned over soft grumbles. They stopped in Ukiah for a bite of early dinner in the car.  
“I swear to God, Mia,” Lars started with his mouth part of the way full of chicken sandwich.  
“What's that?” she asked picking up a French fry and dipping it into ketchup.  
“Nothing, I just felt like saying 'I swear to God.' It would be better if I said something like 'I'm an atheist, I swear to God.'” He took another bite right as Mia burst out laughing.  
“Fought you' lie that,” he noted, bringing a napkin to his mouth. They both wolfed up their food and then, once Lars hung there in the driver's seat with his elbow on the center console, his hand holding his cup of lemonade, and his other elbow upon the top of the door and pressed against the window, he turned to her right as she finished her fries and wiped her mouth with the napkin.  
“Wanna get going?” he asked her.  
“Yes, let's.” She eyed the little roll growing on his belly, accentuated by his shirt and the seat belt across his hips.  
“Okay—let's clean a little bit first, though. You have seen my house, too—I do my best.”  
Once they had gathered up their trash and put it all into the bin outside of the car, Lars started up the car once again and they pulled out of the parking lot. While he waited for the traffic to open up, he brought his index finger to his teeth.  
“The next time we stop—more than likely to fill up the car—not only keep an eye out for bath mats, but for tooth picks, too.”  
“What for?”  
“Eh, they're good to have around. I have a bit of lettuce stuck in my teeth, too.”  
Once they returned to the road, the dense San Francisco fog had begun to rise up with the rain clouds and form a dense, deep violet blanket all around the north coast of California. The next couple of towns had rolled up their sidewalks for the night as they passed through, and it wasn't until they reached a sign reading “Humboldt County” followed by the dark woods clustered upon low hills when Lars started looking at the fuel gauge behind the steering wheel.  
“I think we have enough to get us through the Eureka,” he told her. She glanced over at the gauge and the sight of the little silver needle flirting between the pearly white empty mark.  
“Have you hit 'empty' on this car before?” she inquired.  
“Actually, no. I get close like this, but I have never actually reached 'empty.' This car gets pretty decent mileage, too, like I have gone about El Cerrito with the needle flirting with empty like this. It's okay, though—there's not really anything here in Garberville from what I can see—we cannot be too far out from Eureka, either.”  
They slowed down at the edge of the town and followed the short stretch of the main street past a gas station that appeared to be closed, several low buildings lining the sidewalks, and the entrance to a trailer park on the edge of town. Several lights from houses emerged out of the darkness on Mia's side but otherwise, they returned to darkness. Another sign shot up from the earth on the side of the road but neither of them could read it all the way. Her heart started to hammer inside of her chest because neither her nor Lars knew how much fuel they had left, and night had fallen upon this pitch dark watershed covered in shortening trees and boulders. Every so often she peered over at him and even though he remained silent the whole time, she noticed him looking down at the gauge and then looking back up at the road.  
At one point, just prior to crossing a bridge, he squirmed in his seat as the car began to slow down in the middle of the road.  
“Come on—come on—” he coaxed it in a low whisper. She watched him chew on his bottom lip. The engine sputtered and died right there in the middle of the road; using the rest of what momentum the car had, he veered off the pavement towards the shoulder and braked before they could go any further down the bridge. The headlights shone over a rail lining the bridge; beyond that, all they could see was nothing. Lars smacked the palms of his hands on the edges of the steering wheel.  
“God fucking damn it, I should've stopped in Garberville! Ugh, did you see on that sign back there how far away we are from Eureka? I do know Arcata is up this way here and that's about it. These rural American towns are too damn small and too scattered about—I don't know how they do it in Puerto Rico, but in Denmark, and also Germany and elsewhere in Europe, when a town ends, it ends! Focking—focking fock!” He smacked the wheel again.  
“Not to mention, every single town within this whole focking region rolls up its mother focking sidewalks at seven o'clock at night and I don't know this area too well other aside from the Redwoods. So I can not think of anywhere to go to fuel up.”  
In the glow from the headlights, Mia could see the look of fear in Lars' eyes. She swallowed as she tried to think of an answer.  
“I don't know—twenty miles? I do know we are kind of far from Crescent City.”  
He rested an elbow on top of the steering wheel and peered out the windshield at the pitch dark forest, even darker from the bank of fog flowing in from the ocean. Big fat droplets of rain splattered across the glass the moment a low hanging film of fog passed over the bridge.  
“It's too dark on top of that, too. And now it's raining. Twenty miles or twenty kilometers away, I don't really want to risk going out there, especially on a bridge. And I don't want you to be here in my car all alone without any means of communication, either.”  
They took another glance at one another again and he sighed through his nose.  
“It's a good thing my parents gave us those blankets.”  
“And it's a good thing we ate when we did, too.”  
“It's a damn good thing we ate when we did. So I will keep you warm. Here—” He turned the key in the ignition and the lights clicked off into the darkness in silence. Lars sighed through his teeth; Mia could see the faint silhouette of his head and shoulders against the darkness but it was enough to comfort her. She was alone in this strange place but with the boy she adored. The rain pummeled the roof of the car as if it was made of gravel.  
“But wait, what if—” she began.  
“What?”  
“What if the rain doesn't stop? What if we can't get back to the towns in the morning?”  
“I have faith we will, Mia. We just barely left Garberville and when I was a boy in Denmark, I rode my bike to and from school and that was a total of about ten miles. Or I walked that distance. Every morning and every afternoon, I made that total distance. So I can get us there.”  
“Shall we climb out and then get into the back? I think it'd be easier than crawling over the seats.”  
He smacked his lips and cleared his throat.  
“And risk getting cold and wet? I don't think so. I think I parked too close to the guard rail, too—here, I'll go first.”  
He yanked on the parking lever before he unbuckled his seat belt and groped around the seats behind him. She heard his coat and his jeans rustle and rub against each other, and then there was a soft thud against the roof of the car.  
“That was me, sorry—”  
“What'd you do?”  
“Can you see my leg? At least the outline of it?”  
“Kind of.”  
“I'm gonna need you—” His breath shortened. “—to duck your head.”  
Mia unfastened her belt and bowed forward so the crown of her head brushed against the glove compartment.  
“Go ahead.”  
More rustling, followed by an “ah—!”, then an “oof—”, followed by a thump, and then the car shaking.  
“Okay, come back here,” he commanded, panting, “—this will be just like the time you and I rode back to Portland in the limo. Bring your bag, too. So we're not laying our heads against the door panel.”  
She reached down for her purse and handed it back to him. In the darkness, she could feel him take hold of it.  
“The next car I'm getting, I will make sure it has better mileage and also a light in the ceiling.”  
Mia raised herself out of the seat right as the rain died down over their heads; she twisted her body around so she suspended herself in between the two seats. She crawled on her belly towards the back seat; she extended one hand out to the darkness to feel the top of the seat and then angled herself so her hips would not stick in between the seats.  
“Where are you?” he asked; she could feel his fingers groping on her shoulders and her chest.  
“Right here.”  
“Okay, now push yourself towards me—be careful—”  
She hoisted her legs over the shoulder of the passenger seat so she shifted over to the back of the car. She slammed her shoulder on the back of the seat: it was dark, she had no idea where he lay his head.  
“Okay, now where are you?” she asked, groping around the seat beneath her. Denim, a crease, a fold, a zipper, and then a belt.  
“Of course you totally fondle my crotch,” he cracked. She giggled at that.  
“Where are the blankets?”  
“I think they're on the floor because I couldn't feel them—hang on, hang on—ah! Here's one. Okay, come here—lay next to me and be careful don't hit your head—”  
Keeping her hand on the back of the seat, she slid down towards Lars' reclined body and lay the side of her head upon the flat side of her purse. She felt him moving his left arm about as he tugged the soft but heavy blanket over them. She pulled on one edge towards the back of the seat so she covered her body.  
“You got it?” he asked her as the rain pounded on the roof over their heads.  
“Yes.”  
“Okay. Come here, darling. Kiss my bones—I am so cold.”  
She lay her arm around his chest as she snuggled closer to him. She pressed her nose against his soft, clean smelling hair; she brought a hand up to his face to stroke the round full shape of his jaw before she gave him a kiss on the side of the neck. It was a bit like the limo, but it also wasn't: at least the limo had a lot more space in the back seat. He nestled down inside of the blanket as she dropped her hand down towards his chest and his belly. She heard him snicker as she lifted the hem of his shirt to touch his skin. The tips of her fingers stroked the skin and the soft plumes of hair around his navel.  
“I owe you a rub,” she whispered over the roar of the rain.  
“You don't owe me anything, honey pie.”  
“Happy birthday.”  
“Thank you—”  
Despite his reassurance that they could get off this bridge and return to Garberville in the morning, Mia still had her doubts. They were caught up in a rainstorm and with no means of contacting anyone: she never saw a pay phone in any of the tiny dents in the room before reaching this bridge. She pictured them running out of food and Lars having to hunt to care for the both of them. But then she grimaced at the next thought: Lars getting so desperate with his body and his appetite both plumping up in conjunction with each other that he would perhaps resort to eating her. And then what?  
She hoped he would never have to succumb to that, and yet she had all these scenarios running throughout her mind and every single of them seemed highly plausible. They all seemed more plausible with each creeping minute and every falling drop of rain on the roof of the car.  
All she could do was lay there nestled in that snug spot right between him and the back of the seat with her hand giving his soft, tender belly a gentle, soothing massage.  
At some point, they both fell asleep, but not for long. She awoke to a cold, damp chill settling over the car and Lars' breathing stuttering from the cold. She opened her eyes to see the rain had stopped, but now the sky outside was heavy, dark orange, and ominous with potential snow. She removed her hand from his belly, which was toasty warm to the touch, to touch the crown of his head, and the chill which had settled over him: her purse wasn't enough. She peered over his body to the floor behind the driver's seat and the other two blankets Torben had given them. Mia reached over his body for the one on top and tugged it over the top of his head, and stuffed it down the side of the door panel. She then lay her head down on top of it right as his teeth began chattering inside of his mouth.  
She picked up the other blanket, and yanked it over the one covering them, and wrapped her arm around his torso to keep him warm.  
“No—” she whispered, squeezing him to give him more warmth; she brought her other arm from underneath her body to cradle his head. “No—not you. I can't lose you. No puedo perderte—chico hermoso. Te necesito. Necesito tu amor. Te amo. Te amo.”  
She felt the tears brimming her eyes. She was going to lose him. She was going to lose the only other boy she ever loved. But she was going to lose him, at least she held him in her arms as he went into the night. But she also knew he had an extra eighteen pounds on his body to keep his vital organs warm. She squeezed his body tight for what she believed was to be an eternity.  
A soft tap on the window caught her attention and her eyes shot open. Beams of golden light streamed through the back window; she lifted her head and then she lifted her upper body from the hand made pillow to see a man looming outside of the window wrapped in a heavy, dark wind breaker. His nose had a flat tip on the end, and he had dark eyes under bushy eyebrows, and an oval face: at that moment, he was the most beautiful man in the world to her.  
“Are you okay?” he asked her through the window.  
“We ran out of gas and we're cold,” she called out, her voice echoing through the car; Lars shivered and whimpered at the feel of the cold surrounding them.  
“Could you open the door? Or roll down the window?”  
“Sure—”  
She clambered over Lars' extended legs to grip onto the crank on the door panel: a rush of cold air flooded into the car at that moment. The man knitted his eyebrows at her and then at Lars, who shuddered and chattered his teeth at quick pace right behind her.  
“Is he okay?”  
“He's freezing—I can't get him warm.”  
“Okay.” He turned his head to the car behind them. “Hey, Jerry! You were right! This is Lars' car!”  
A man's voice said something.  
“Yeah, man! He's probably got hypothermia! You guys make room for them—this car's easily ten degrees colder than it is outside!”  
He turned back to Mia right as she opened the door for the man. Footsteps splashed over the puddles which had formed on the bridge; she recognized his long blond hair and sullen expression.  
“Hey!” she declared at the sight of Jerry.  
“Hey you! Hate to be seeing you again like this—come on, let's get you out of there—”  
Mia climbed out of the back seat into the frigid night to let Jerry and the man wake up Lars and help him out of the car. In the light of the headlights, she could see him raise his body into an upright position: he opened his eyes and he had parted his lips to let out a stuttered, short breath. Mia sighed with relief that these men showed up at the right time, but she also wanted to cry because she came close to nearly losing her lover. Jerry coaxed him to the pick up truck parked behind the rear fender of their car. The other man reached into the back seat for the blankets, but then hesitated.  
“Is this your bag right here?” he asked her, keeping his face turned in the other direction.  
“It is.”  
He lifted himself out of the back seat to give it to her; she slung the strap over her shoulder so he could roll up the blankets and stuff them under his arm.  
“You guys got anything else?” he asked her as closed the door.  
“Our overnight bags and some food in the trunk.”  
“Okay, take these blankets to Jerry and Layne and the back seat of the truck, and I'll get those things.”  
“What's your name?”  
“My name? I'm Mark.”  
“Mark.”  
“Mark Lanegan. I'm a friend of Jerry and Layne and so many more you've probably haven't met yet.”


	53. Chapter 53

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I don't need much and that ain't no lie,  
> ain't runnin' any race,  
> give to me my country pie,  
> I won't throw it up in anybody's face.  
> Shake me up that old peach tree,  
> little Jack Horner's got nothin' on me.  
> Oh me, oh my,  
> love that country pie.”  
> -”Country Pie”, Bob Dylan

“F-F—F-F-F—F-F-Fuck!”  
Lars had nestled down in between Layne and Jerry in the back seat behind Mia and Mark with all of his parents' blankets wrapped around his body; she slid her purse down between her legs before strapping into the front passenger seat. She stuffed her hands into her coat pockets and embraced the blast of warm air from the vents upon the dashboard once Mark shut his door. He peered into the rear view mirror next to his head at the three of them in the back.  
“How's he doing?”  
“He's freezing his ass off,” replied Jerry.  
“Alright—we'll get you both up to Eureka. We're not too far out, anyways—about forty miles. Get some warm food into you, and see where this goes—”  
“W-W-W-What ab-b-b-b-bout mmm-m-m-my c-c-c-car?” Lars chattered from behind Mia's head.  
“Said you ran out of gas, right?” Mark asked her.  
“Yeah.”  
“Get these two sweet hearts somewhere warm and then one of us can come back with a thing of fuel to fill 'er up?” he called back to Layne and Jerry.  
“Sounds like a plan,” said Layne, clearing his throat. “Besides, this is—this is like the sticks. The middle of nowhere. The road less traveled. I doubt anyone's going to break into that little car.”  
Mark fired up the engine of the truck and the digital clock on the dashboard showed ten twenty.  
“The hell? It's only ten o'clock?” demanded Mia.  
“When d'you get out here?” asked Jerry.  
“Like—quarter to seven.” The truck pulled away from its place on the bridge and the golden light from the headlights shone over the rear end of Lars' car and the “Heart and Soul: Copenhagen” sticker in the rear window one last time as they departed into the darkness. “We left the Bay Area at around three and we were making good time as we came up through Santa Rosa, and Sonoma, and Ukiah… the plan was to stop over for the night up in Crescent City.”  
“Where you guys going?”  
“P-P-P-P-Portland,” stuttered Lars.  
“Yeah, we were gonna go back to Portland for New Year's because I live up there, and then we were going to hang out for a few days before I went back to work. Speaking of which, I need to call James and Ashley and tell them what happened… how'd you three find us, by the way?”  
“Well, I was coming over from Sacramento,” started Mark, clearing his throat, “I was over there for a while to figure out some things for my band's new album—I'm a singer, and yet I couldn't get a plane ticket. But anyways, I was going to take the interstate and then the interchange all the way up to Crater Lake—but most of the roads are closed, especially the ones going around Mount Shasta and towards the southern part of Oregon. All from this big ass front coming over the West Coast. You guys are actually pretty lucky this little highway here is so down low and so close to the ocean… anyway, it's funny you say you were going through Santa Rosa because when I stopped there for gas, I saw the two of them were down there and they told me they ran out of money in San Francisco so they needed a ride, too. So we kept going through and we stopped to get something to eat in Ukiah, and that was about an hour ago. We're driving through here, and we get to that bridge, and Layne—who was sitting where you are right now—pointed out the car, because for some reason when someone breaks down outside of a small town in the middle of nowhere, it's a huge deal because the possibilities are endless. And then Jerry goes, 'that's Lars' car! Heart and Soul: Copenhagen, that's him!' And then Layne looks at me and goes, 'this can't be good.' So while the three of us aren't hungry, we're gonna get you both something to eat, especially Lars back there. I'll pull into the first place I find in Eureka—I don't really know this area too well, other than the fact this is one of those weird little parts of California where they get a lot of earthquakes and the wilderness is almost not of this world. The area near Mount Lassen and Mount Shasta is like that, too.”  
He peered into the rear view mirror again and then back to the winding road before them.  
“How does soup sound?”  
“Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-The b-b-b-b-b-best.”  
“Alright, buddy, we're almost there—” Mark turned back to her for a second. “—didn't catch your name, either. Jerry said it but it totally went in one ear and out the other.”  
“Mia.”  
“Mia, that was it!”  
“Puerto Rican baker,” added Jerry.  
“Lars' very own private baker,” cracked Layne, and the three of them laughed; Lars on the hand, kept chattering his teeth through his parted lips. Mia twisted her neck back to look behind her; all she could see out of the corner of her eye was his head pressed up against something, perhaps the back of the seat; the edge of a black baseball cap upon Layne's head; and a snug bundle of blankets upon the middle seat there in the back. She returned to face out the windshield at the pitch dark winding road before them. Within moments, the pavement straightened out and the amber lights making up the southern portion of Eureka entered her view. She shook her head as she realized they had broken down not too far from the first gas station at the edge of town; over the continual blast from the heater, Lars stopped chattering his teeth while his breathing steadied and smoothed out. Mark peered into the mirror once more to check on the three of them there in the back seat before he pulled into a small cafe with bright red neon lights in the front window and a black and white checker board floor which they could see from outside.  
Mark parked in the first spot closest to the door before switching off the engine. He peered into the mirror once more at Lars nestled down in between Layne and Jerry.  
“Anything specific?”  
“Me?” he choked out; Mia noticed a slight quiver still lingering inside of his voice.  
“Yeah.”  
“Er—chicken and rice soup?”  
“Chicken and rice, you said?”  
“Yeah. Nice big bowl, too.”  
Mark turned to Mia once again.  
“Wanna come with me?” he asked her.  
“Yeah, sure.”  
She picked up her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder before climbing out of the truck. Crisp, chilly ocean air ran over her head and her neck, and the old wound on the crown of her head, now healed itched and ached from the feel of it. She grimaced as she met up with Mark at the hood of the truck.  
“You okay?”  
“Yeah, it's just—”  
“Cold?”  
“Yeah.”  
He held the door for her into the cozy bright cafe with off white neon lights upon the low ceiling and faded red leather seats surrounding the low eggshell white tables; Mia spotted a glass display next to the front counter, one beholding shelves of pies, cakes, cookies, and cobbler, which in turn reminded her of all the pastries in Smell the Magic back home. They both stood at the counter and awaited for someone to assist them, and she knew Lars would perhaps like a nice big warm slice of that blueberry cobbler closest to her.  
“Do you want anything?” Mark asked her.  
“Two pieces of this cobbler right here.” She gestured to the tin with the flaky golden crust interspersed with bluish violet blueberries.  
“Two?”  
“One for him, and one for me.”  
“I see,” he noted, completely oblivious to her intention.  
Once the sole waitress in the cafe took their order, which Mia paid up front for, and they waited for another few minutes for the two boxes of cobbler and the container of creamy chicken and rice soup straight off the stove accompanied with a white plastic spoon and two forks. Mia thanked her and the one cook in the back before they returned outside to the cold oceanic winds and the truck; Jerry opened the back passenger door to take the container of soup out of Mark's hands and give it to Lars. Mia, meanwhile, set the containers of cobbler on the center console so she could climb back into the front seat.  
“Let's see if we can get you guys into a hotel around here,” said Mark as he closed the door and turned the keys in the ignition, which thus fired up the engine once again. “You were planning on staying overnight after all.”  
“Indeed we were,” she replied, cradling the boxes of cobbler in her lap; the smell of the soup combined with the aroma of the cobbler within seconds.  
“Oh, my God, that smells so good,” remarked Layne.  
“Doesn't it? I kinda envy you guys now,” said Mark with a chuckle. They pulled out of the parking space and returned to the road towards the two story white stucco buildings trimmed with rich royal blue clustered off the left side of the road. Even though it was for this one night, Mia had her doubts about using a check for ten dollars to pay for a single room on the second floor which would behold the ocean when she and Lars woke up in the morning.  
She signed away money to a place without her husband knowing, and she was about to stay in a place without his knowledge, either.  
Once Layne and Jerry helped them into their room—a cozy room with eggshell white wall paper, a small table near the wall opposite from the wide queen bed and next to a low heavy wooden dresser which held a small black television—the former lingered behind to make sure Lars was comfortable on the bed. He had peeled back the top duvet while Lars took off his coat and threw it over the chair next to the table, and then Layne helped him recline back to the head board with two of the four pillows underneath his lower back; he then spread the heavy blanket over his outstretched legs. Lars' bangs, while still clean, hung over his brow in dense clumps as if he had been underwater, and the color had all but drained from his face, and his lips continued to tremble from the cold; his hand trembled a bit as he picked up his spoon for a bite of the hot soup.  
Mia stood next to Layne, who towered over her in his heavy black leather jacket and black cap over a head of long, shoulder length curly blond hair, and watched him for a minute there at the foot of the bed.  
“I think—I think there was—a leak in the car window,” he pointed out to her as he held the container underneath his chin.  
“Yeah, he got my sleeve all wet.” Layne showed her the drops and smears of water all along his sleeve; Mia gasped at the sight of it but then she knitted her eyebrows out of confusion.  
“And it was raining in droves, too—so it got the top of your head wet but not mine?” she demanded, heading towards the bathroom for one of the soft clean fluffy towels on the metal rack.  
“I guess so—mmmmm, that feels so good,” he told her upon swallowing the first big spoonful of creamy broth. Mia returned to the head of the bed with the towel in hand.  
“Yeah, put that on his head,” encouraged Layne; careful not to get one end of it into the container, she lay the towel length wise over the top of his head to keep the warmth inside of his hair and his scalp. He huddled down against the blankets as he proceeded to eat his soup.  
“That's odd because I didn't feel it on your face or on the top of your head,” she recalled. “Unless it's right on the top of your head.” He nodded as he dipped the spoon into the broth again, and that time picked up a small pile of the wild rice and pieces of chicken. She turned to Layne who nodded his head and showed her a genuine little smile.  
“Thank you,” she told him in a soft voice.  
“My pleasure. So Mark, Jerry, and I are gonna get some gas cans and go back to his car out in the woods. And then I'm gonna make some phone calls and see if I can get Jerry and me some more money—apparently, our rent's due soon.”  
“Get your asses in gear,” she goaded him before turning to Lars again.  
“Your keys are in your coat pocket, right?” He nodded his head; the hem of the towel covered his bangs and part of his brow so it looked as though he had been stripped of his eyebrows. Mia fished through the pocket on top, and found the keys to Lars' car, and handed it to Layne.  
“Okay, we'll be back soon.”  
He wheeled around to open the door and then stepped back outside to join up with Jerry and Mark downstairs again. Mia ran a hand through her hair and examined Lars there at the head of the bed for a moment. He looked up at her with those green eyes, now darkened from the shadow cast by the towel upon his head. The cold still kept that blush from returning to his skin but at least he was eating. She stripped off her coat and took it to the hangers in the closet next to the bathroom. He cleared his throat as if about to say something again. She poked her head out from the closet to take a look at him.  
“Did you say something?” she asked him.  
“Hm?”  
“Were you going to say something?”  
He cleared his throat again before he swallowed his next bite of soup.  
“I split my pants again,” he answered in a hoarse voice. She gaped at him.  
“Where? When did that happen?”  
“No idea. I have absolutely no idea. Probably—when I was climbing over the seats because it's on the side of my lower leg, but I don't know for sure. But that was the other reason I got so cold, too.”  
Mia padded back towards him and took a seat on the edge of the bed next to his lower legs: Layne had tucked the heavy blanket under his feet and all around his shins to keep him warm. Lars sighed through his nose as he swallowed down another bite of wild rice and roasted chicken.  
“I feel better already,” he told her; she examined his face and the faintest of pink color returning to his cheek bones.  
“You still look pale and peaked, but—yeah, the rosy color in your face is starting to come back. I'm going to call Ashley and then Marcia and Sonia and tell them what happened and where we are.”  
“Mm-hmm,” he replied with his mouth; he swallowed again. “Just please don't bring up the fact I got hypothermia.”  
“Why? What for? Lars, it could've killed you. You know—you and I being—together and all.”  
“Yeah, but—that's just kind of a—I don't know—sensitive topic, I would say?”  
She licked her lips as he dipped his spoon into the soup once again.  
“When I got hit in the head, we all talked about that. And we all talked about that.”  
“I didn't feel good talking about it, though. I still kind of don't, either. You know—the—the thought that—I could've lost you. I could've lost my girl. And the three of them could have lost their best friend. It's a hard thought to stomach and it's hard to imagine it actually manifesting.”  
“Because you lost your best friend.”  
“We did…” He slipped the head of the spoon into his mouth and downed that bit of broth. “We certainly did. And I think it could be—because I'm European, we do not so obliged to share our deepest thoughts with the world like Americans, that is the other reason I am not really comfortable with thinking about it. I mean, you can. You can tell them all you want because they're your best friends, but—it's just my preference and the way I feel, though.”  
She showed him a little smile before reaching over to touch the spot on the blanket which covered his belly.  
“Where my head and my feet fell in with the poles, my belly remained as warm as the equator,” he remarked at the feel of her hand. She snickered at that.  
“You can learn to be comfortable with it,” she pointed out.  
“Oh, for sure. We all can learn to be comfortable. See this bed here? I'm comfortable on this bed here, and I'm getting comfortable with this towel on my head. So—I think if I talk about it more and ruminate over it more, I can reconcile with it. But for now—I've got this soup with me and—what's in the boxes?”  
He gestured to the white boxes on the table across the room.  
“Cobbler,” she promptly replied.  
“Cobbler! What kind?”  
“Blueberry.”  
“Mmm—and then I remember you like your little drummer boy nice and fat.” She burst out laughing as he took another bite of his soup. He took some more bites before lifting the edge of the container to his mouth to drink up the rest of the broth: grains of wild rice remained at the bottom and so he scooped them all up in one fell swoop, and slipped it into his mouth.  
“You know, before we fell asleep there in the car, I kept going through all these scenarios of us freezing to death or you having to resort to hunting because we ran out of food.”  
“Me? Hunt?” he choked out, setting the container in his lap. “James is the hunter. I'd be a fisher man at best.”  
“I also thought of you eating me.”  
He gaped at her with his eyes wide.  
“Make no mistake, darling—I would starve to death before I let that happen. I would rather succumb to the nauseated feeling in my own stomach and waste away in those woods before I succumbed to the way of the cannibal.”  
“Really?”  
“Yes. There is no way I would do that. Simply none.”  
Mia pressed her free hand to her chest; her hand, meanwhile, stroked over the blanket.  
“Would—Would you like your cobbler now?”  
“Yes, please.”  
She stood to her feet and headed towards the table for one of the boxes and a fork; she lay it down upon his lap as if she was bringing it to him on a silver platter.  
“Baby, it's cold outside,” she whispered into his face; she reached up with one hand to lift the edge of the towel up from his brow. She gazed into his green eyes, which were as clear as ever: his skin still lacked that blush but it was coming back with the light brush of pink right underneath his eyes.  
“Baby, it's cold outside,” he echoed. She set her hands on either side of him to steady herself.  
“Tell me—since you're not comfortable with speaking your deepest, darkest of thoughts, what do I have to do to get you comfortable with it?”  
“Well—” he cleared his throat before he lowered the tone of his voice, “since the two of us have experienced intensity togther, you and I have connected through our stomachs, and you have been nothing but open and totally real with me, I feel us coming closer daily. So—the first thing is I don't want to be left behind. Keep me with you. Come on tour with us if and when you can. Keep coming with me. Stay with me.”  
“Gladly. And what's the next thing?”  
“Next thing?”  
He handed her the white plastic fork.  
“Feed you?”  
He nodded his head and she took the fork.  
“Not even several blows to the head should stop us,” he told her, and with that, she opened the lid of the box to reveal the piece of cobbler the size of the palm of his hand: the aroma of the crust and the blueberries tickled their noses. She stuck the tines of the fork into the crust and lifted it up to his mouth; as he held it in his mouth, she lifted her other hand to lift the box off of his lip and place it on the mattress next to him. She peeled the blanket back from his waist and then lifted his shirt. As he swallowed the bite, the tips of her fingers caressed over the exposed skin on his belly.  
She picked up another piece of cobbler, and slipped it into his mouth, and kept her hand on his skin. She did it another three more times before he spoke again.  
“We should do this when we're in Astoria in March.”  
“Except there, I think we will be outside.”  
He raised his eyebrows at that.  
“Alright,” he said with his mouth full.


	54. Chapter 54

It was shortly after midnight by the time Lars slid down upon the top of the bed with the towel still remaining upon his head; his bangs had dried and began to poke out in every which direction over his brow. Mia took her seat next to him with her back against the head board and the box with half of her blueberry cobbler in her lap; she had fed him some of hers before she dove head first into it for herself.  
The top of the heavy blanket lay in a lazy manner all around his exposed middle to emphasize his waist and his hips: the flesh on the lower part of his belly poked out with a nice round gentle curve, just a little pudgy roll forming all around his waist. He lay the back of his head upon the top pillow, now squished from his lower back, and then the back of his hand upon his forehead.  
She took a bite from the cobbler before taking a glimpse over at him right as he closed his eyes; the stretch mark next to his belly button had started to fade and lose its red tone, but another one started forming right on the opposite side. She set down her fork on the edge of the box so she could reach over to stroke his skin yet again.  
“If this is how it will going to be in Astoria, I don't ever want it to stop,” he croaked out, keeping his eyes closed.  
“Sure did go crazy on the cobbler there at the end,” she remarked, stroking the tips of her fingers along the line of hair running underneath his belly button.  
“It was so delicious. Nice and warm and—fattening—and with your hand there on me—God—I have never—”  
“Never what?”  
“I have never—felt so good—in my life. Everything is warm and sweet—there is love in every single corner of this room here. There is love all over the inside—the inside of my—my—”  
“Your belly,” she whispered.  
“Right.”  
She giggled at that.  
“Oh, Lord—thing is it's—mm, it's—it's not like—when you fed me that red velvet cake. Nothing like that.”  
“You were just—just stuffed then.”  
“I really was. Hey, guess what?” he asked her out of the blue.  
“What?”  
“We have got a telly in here.” She peered across the room to the television on the dresser.  
“We're also facing it,” she pointed out, taking a couple more bites of cobbler.  
“Indeed we are—by the way, have Mark, Layne, and Jerry come back yet?”  
“I don't think they have, baby.”  
She finished out her slice of cobbler with a final scoop of flaky crust and blueberries right into her mouth. She then placed the empty box and the fork on the nightstand next to her before rolling over onto her side to touch Lars some more. He had closed his eyes and so a calm, placid expression fell upon his face. His chest rose and fell in a steady fashion while all the skin on his belly remained exposed from his raised shirt, and emphasized by the blanket around his waist. A soft groan emanated from the inside of his throat with every downward heave of his chest.  
Mia stroked the delicate skin under his chin before giving him a light kiss good night on the cheek.  
Careful not to wake him up, she picked the towel off from the top of his head: strands of hair floated back down from the threads of the towel and onto the crown of his head to reform that fluffy bush of hair making his bangs. He remained still, softly breathing through his nose and bringing a gentle groan out from inside of his throat every few seconds. She clambered off of the bed with the towel wadded in one hand and, before hanging it up on the rack next to the bathroom door, she held it by the two of the corners and then folded it over by the length; she tossed her hair back before returning to the bed. Then she remembered she had not called James and Ashley, or Marcia and Sonia for that matter. It was late, so perhaps James and Ashley had already turned in for the night, but Marcia and Sonia could still be awake.  
She picked up the receiver from the phone upon the nightstand and dialed their phone number. It rang twice and then—  
“Hello?” Marcia answered; the tone of voice sounded frantic, as if she had gone running.  
“Hi, Marsh,” she greeted her in a soft voice so as to not wake Lars. “It's Mia.”  
“Mia! Where the hell have you guys been?”  
“We're in Eureka right now. We left the Bay Area this afternoon, and we ran out of gas about forty miles from here, and we got a ride to the nearest hotel.”  
“Wait, why are you talking so softly?”  
“Well, first of all, it's twelve thirty and Lars just fell asleep, so you know—I don't want to wake him up. Second, I should ask you as to why you're talking so loudly.”  
“Because Wayne dropped by here. You just missed him, it was about ten minutes ago. He's looking for you.”  
She clasped her hand to her mouth. Her mind went blank for a moment before she could bring herself to speak again.  
“What!” she demanded in a hushed voice.  
“Yes.”  
“No!” Mia peered over her shoulder at the bed, but Lars hadn't stirred.  
“No. No, no, no, no. Are you three alright?”  
“Yeah, we are. Sonia's scared shitless, though, and I can't believe I can actually speak right now—I just came out of the bathroom when the phone rang. Luckily Kirk wasn't around so he didn't have to witness the wrath of your cuckolded husband.”  
“Do you know where he went?”  
“I think he went back to the house, but I don't know. He just screamed at us—and I thought he was going to hit me—but he just put his hands on my neck before he stormed out. He broke our lamp.”  
“He broke your lamp!”  
“Yeah, the one in the living room. He also kicked the front door. It's not like a trailer door so he didn't kick it out but he did leave a good sized dent in the panel.”  
“Where'd Kirk go?”  
“I don't know. He just said 'I'll be right back' and that was like twenty five minutes ago, so Kirk just missed him. I'm afraid Wayne might come back… and if he does, what do you think I should tell him?”  
“Tell him—”  
Mia stopped herself and held the receiver out from her ear. She licked her lips and then nibbled on the bottom as she gazed on at Lars sleeping there under the light of the lamp next to his side of the bed. She stared at his belly, growing softer and sweeter by the day, and the indents making up his hip bones: how she wanted to kiss his hips again but he had already fallen asleep. She gazed on at his face, all soft and round and… precious. He was a precious boy, a young man she had cherished on such a deep level, that there was no way she could back out and tell him she had a crazy husband back home. She would have to tell Lars that they needed another plan so as to avoid him. Wayne also hit her and treated her like a pile of lawn trimmings waiting to be thrown out. She needed to be with Lars, at least until the heat blew over in northwest Portland.  
“Tell him—to stick it.”  
Marcia nearly gagged on something.  
“Stick it? Stick it! Mia, I know he's a douche canoe, but you can't be serious.”  
“Marsh, stand up to him. He wants you to be afraid. Push him off. Get Sonia to step in with you. I believe in you both. If he doesn't comply, call the police.”  
Marcia let out an exasperated sigh. She remained in silence on the other end before she sighed again and cleared her throat.  
“Okay. Okay, I'll—I'll—I'll tell Sonia right now.”  
“Good. And Marsh?”  
“Yes?”  
“Thank you. Thank you so much. I love you.”  
“I love you, too. How's Lars, by the way?”  
Mia glanced up at his slumbering body, still asleep and not minute had he moved or woken up while she was on the phone.  
“Sound asleep. He's got a full tummy so he was all soft and sweet, and then he fell asleep.”  
“Aw—wait, back up, you said you guys ran out of gas?”  
“Yeah, about forty miles outside of town. He and I had to hang out in the back seat for a little bit, like we laid down and cuddled down with a bunch of blankets his parents gave us. Lars thinks there's a leak in his door so his head got all wet—it was pouring rain—and I was freaking out that he got hypothermia because it was so damn cold in the car.”  
“Oh, my God, really?”  
“Yeah. It was odd because Layne and Jerry showed up with this guy—his name was Mark and I guess he's from Seattle, too, and they just happened to be in the area and they stumbled upon us there in the woods. It was wild and Lars and I both were lucky how they came along just in time, too. So when we got up here, I got him back up to temperature with a bowl of soup and some cobbler, though.”  
“Oh, my God, well, at least he's alright and you didn't have to take him to the hospital.”  
“What's going on?” Sonia's voice floated in from the background.  
“Lars got hypothermia while they were coming home,” Marcia told her.  
“Holy shit, is he alright?” she yelped.  
“Yeah. Mia worked her magic on him.”  
“Where are they?”  
“They're in—where'd you say you were again?”  
“Eureka. We were supposed to get up to Crescent City tonight but we ran out of fuel.”  
“They're down in Eureka. Sounds like they were coming up the coast.”  
“Oh, Jesus—I bet it was raining down there, too.”  
“Yeah, if it was raining up here, it was definitely raining down there.” Marcia returned to the mouth piece on the other end. “My question now is, what're you going to tell Lars?”  
“I'll think of something,” vowed Mia in a low voice.  
“I hope you do—I'm scared to think of what could happen to you guys after what happened tonight. You guys sleep tight for me, okay?”  
“And me, too!” declared Sonia from the background.  
“And Sonia, too.”  
“Of course. Good night, Marcia.”  
“'Night, Mia—” They both hung up at the same time; Mia stared down at Lars, sound asleep on the other side of the bed. She stood there for a minute before she unbuttoned her pants.

Gray morning sunlight shone through the crack between the curtain and the window, and left a sliver of light on the side of Mia's face. She rolled her head over the pillow before her eyes fluttered open and then closed again. She hoisted herself onto her elbows before taking a glance at Lars, who hadn't moved from his spot on his back there on the bed; he had rolled his head to the other side so she stared right into his serene face, those thin dark lines made up of his eyelashes under his eyebrows, those cherry lips pouted out a bit, and the flesh underneath his chin holding the softest and gentlest of curves. She gazed past him at the clock on the nightstand, which read seven fifty-two in the morning.  
Despite the time, she leaned into his face and lay her lips onto his: a low groan emerged from his throat.  
“Hey—” she whispered into his face; his stomach let out a quiet grumble, and he pursed his lips together and knitted his eyebrows in discomfort.  
“Hey—chico hermoso—papacito—would you like some breakfast?” she whispered. He groaned again, and she gave him another kiss.  
“I know you want breakfast.” Her fingers crept around the soft roll over his right hip. He groaned and rolled his head over the pillow, but he never opened his eyes. She hovered her hand over his waist to give him a gentle poke.  
“I know you want it—and I know you want me—”  
Her other hand glided over his exposed belly, which had been out in the open all night long as the skin felt cold to the touch. His lips parted to let out a soft moan. Strands of her dark hair dangled over his nose and his mouth.  
“Don't make me get the lace to tease you,” she whispered into his face. His eyes then popped open, and those green irises stared right into her soul.  
“Lace?” he blurted out.  
“Lace. Now, come on—let's get some breakfast.”  
“Breakfast?”  
“Breakfast. What would your pudgy little tummy like for today?”  
“Whatever you want. Whatever you are having for yourself.” He ran his tongue along the front of his teeth and then smacked his lips together a few times. “Forgot to brush my teeth again.” There was a knock on the door.  
“I'll get that,” she told him, touching the tip of his nose with the tip of her finger. Mia climbed over his body to get dressed; as she hooked up her bra, there was another knock.  
“Hang on, hang on—” she called out right as Lars sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes.  
“Oh, God, what time is it?”  
Mia held her blouse in hand when they heard a third knock on the door. Exasperated, she stalked to the door to undo the chain over the doorknob; she flung the door open to see Jerry standing there before them wearing the same leather jacket as the night before.  
“Hi, uh—oh,” he caught himself at the sight of her standing there with her top in one hand and her other hand upon the edge of the door.  
“Oh, hi, Jerry,” she greeted him, unfazed. “What are you doing?”  
“Uh—I just wanted to say that we brought the car back last night—finally. We had to find a—a—a gas can, and then we had to find a gas station that was open late, and we couldn't, so we did it about—thirty minutes ago, is this a bad time?”  
“No, no, no, no, no—we just woke up.”  
“Yeah, man, we're—” Lars cut himself off by rubbing his face with both hands and then stretching his arms back behind his head, “—what she said. We were going to get breakfast, too.”  
“That—That's the other thing I came here for was I wanted to ask you both if you'd like to be treated to the—continental breakfast downstairs, courtesy of this hotel here and the three of us.”  
“Is there's a reason why you looked at me when you said 'continental'?” scoffed Lars.  
“No. Aside from—you know—”  
Mia threw on her blouse, a filmy bright blue top with loose long sleeves and a low neckline, right as they were conversing with each other. Jerry pointed at her while looking on at Lars.  
“Man, she doesn't mess around,” he remarked.  
“No, she doesn't—and then I remember I split my pants again,” said Lars as he climbed to his feet and yanked off his jeans so he stood there next to the bed in his shirt and his underwear. Jerry returned to Mia right as she adjusted her hair out from the back of her shirt.  
“A little show before breakfast, I see,” he added.  
“Yeah, I'll say,” she retorted, and he chuckled. Lars darted past them to his overnight bag for a clean pair of black pants and put them on before tying up his tennis shoes with haste. He stood upright with one final toss of his hair before heading towards the two of them.  
“Don't forget the key,” she told him.  
“Oh, right, right, right—” He doubled back to the table for the plain white card with the dual black stripes down one side and stuffed it into his pocket. The three of them stepped out of the room right as the door shut behind them. A gray blanket of clouds had covered the sky overhead with a few perforations to let the sunlight shine through; on the other side of the street stood a series of low buildings with evergreen trees, and then the slate gray expanse of the ocean. Jerry led them down the staircase which took them to the concrete sidewalk stretching around the building; they made a left turn to the front lobby, where they were greeted by a long buffet table pressed against one wall: all manner of muffins, bagels, donuts, English muffins, loaves of wheat bread for toast, fresh sliced melon, apples, oranges, bananas, grapefruit, a platter of bacon, sausage, and an iron for making Belgian waffles; right in the middle of the table stood a display for jams, jellies, and butter. On the other side of the room stood a table for juices, tea, milk, and two keraphs of coffee with packets of sugar and small metal jugs of cream.  
Lars lunged for one of the paper plates at the closest end of the table and got right to it with two chocolate muffins. Mia followed suit, and so did Jerry. She thought about telling Lars about the phone call from last night, but she wanted to tell him about the plan she had in mind. There was no way she could tell him about Wayne, not now. And if she could, she would rather lie about him in order to keep Lars safe.  
Once she had loaded up her plate, she set it down at the closest table to pour herself a cup of coffee with some cream, and then came back right as Lars dipped a tea bag into his mug and then took a bite of a muffin. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes.  
“Oh, yeah, that's good,” he muttered with his mouth full. He opened his eyes to show her the look of pleasure upon his face. “I took these instead of those donuts, because no one makes donuts quite like you do, honey pie.”  
She felt her face grow warm as she picked up a cubed piece of honeydew and held it before her mouth.  
“Lars—can I suggest something?”  
He swallowed the bite of muffin. “Suggest something? Since you said 'suggest', I assume it involves a little fun between you and me.” He showed her a little grin and his cheek bones filled out in response.  
“You know, since New Year's is four days away and I'll be driving the rest of the way to Portland, how about you and I take our time up the coast? I would rather show you the coast than have us—you know—spend all that time at my house.”  
“Oh, darling, you know I would love that. And I had a feeling we were going to do that anyways. You do know the state better than I do, after all.”  
He picked up his cup of tea, which had only steeped for about a couple of minutes, and held it in mid air as if about to do a toast.  
“Eat my way up Oregon—that's quite the feat.”  
“Eat our way up Oregon,” she echoed, picking up her cup of coffee and clinking it against his mug right as Jerry took a seat next to them.


	55. Chapter 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Tonight, I'ma give it to you harder  
> Tonight, I'ma turn your body out  
> Relax, let me do it how I wanna  
> If you got it, I need it, and I'ma put it down  
> Buckle up, I'ma give it to you stronger  
> Hands up, we can go a little longer  
> Tonight, I'ma get a little crazy, get a little crazy, baby.”  
> -”Rude Boy”, Rihanna  
> (without her, I'd still be a repressed STEM student somewhere right now)

Lars poured himself a paper cup full of hot water and took another bag of black tea of which he slipped into his jeans pocket. He turned to Mia right as put her empty plate into the bin next to the coffee makers.  
“By the way, did you hit up James and Ashley last night?”  
“No, I couldn't. It was too late at that point, so I decided not to bother them.”  
“James actually does not mind, but that's—that's real kind of you, though. Jerry and Layne are taking their sweet time so I say we go back to the room for the time being—”  
She nodded and they headed out of the lobby, back into the crisp, damp morning towards the staircase, and then back up to their room. He took the key out of his pocket and slipped it into the slot over the doorknob.  
He held the door for her with his free hand and then he closed it behind her. Before she could say another word, he set the cup on the table and darted to the bathroom.  
“Hang tight, I have to take a piss—”  
“Okay, baby boy.”  
The light clicked on and yet he never closed the door. Meanwhile, Mia took a seat on the edge of the bed and thought about the phone call she made the night before. She hoped Marcia, Sonia, and Kirk were safe from Wayne, and she hoped he never came back again over the course of the night. She shook her head to remove the thought from her mind, and then another thought fell into her mind after that. Lars and Kirk were both in music: surely talking about what they loved could help take her mind off of it.  
“Hey, you know, we should come up with a song of our own,” she suggested.  
“Like—'our song'?” His voice echoed over the walls of the bathroom.  
“Yeah. Especially since we're going to be on the road soon, we should—you know—pick something before hand.”  
He was silent for a moment before he spoke again.  
“How about 'Honey Pie'? 'Cause I'm always calling you that.”  
“Oh, by the Beatles?”  
“Yeah. Or 'Oye Como Va', by—er, Santana, as an homage to you and your heritage.”  
“Mmm, let's go with 'Honey Pie.'”  
He stepped out from the bathroom right then with his hand on the zipper of his jeans and zipped up.  
“Sounds good by me.” He flashed her a little smile before doubling back to the sink to wash his hands, fix his hair, and brush his teeth. Marcia and Sonia persisted inside of her mind; she wondered which lamp her husband broke as she heard the water running out of the faucet as Lars cleaned off his tooth brush. He then cleared his throat.  
“Now I have a question for you.”  
Lars emerged from around the corner and leaned his shoulder against the wall. She ran the tip of her tongue from one corner of her mouth to the other, and he showed her a little smirk.  
“How are we gonna fuck in my car?”  
“Oh, you mean like—when we take a break from driving?"  
“Yeah. Unless—you know—you want to get another room somewhere.”  
“Maybe when we get close to home, we can.”  
He chewed on his bottom lip. “…kinky.”  
“We also have plenty of time before we have to check out at eleven. We didn't have a chance last night for your birthday and all.” She patted on the mattress right next to her.  
“True. So shall I—keep my shoes on or no?”  
“If you want.”  
She peeled off her blouse and lay it on the top of the bed next to her. She reached behind her back when Lars raised his eyebrows at her.  
“Ah, not wasting any time, I see—” He stripped off his shirt and tossed it over to the table before taking a dive towards her. She fell onto her back onto the white bed sheet, and so he planted his knees on either side of her and in turn straddled her hips. He loomed over her face and neck with a devilish grin and his head bowed; his Deep Purple pendant dangled down from his neck and right over her open mouth.  
“Stuffed like a pair of turkeys and—ready to come out and play,” he growled into her face in a husky voice; he smelled of pepper mint.  
“Give it to me, baby boy,” she whispered, tilting her head back to show him the smooth skin upon her neck. His tongue lapped out of his mouth and he dove down to her neck; she clasped onto his back to bring him closer to her body. His lips suckled on the spot on her neck, while his tongue stroked over the skin to taste her. His chest heaved more and more with every suck and every lick. Her hands wandered down towards his lower back and the soft handles over his hips; her fingers pulsed upon his warm, silky skin. His left knee shuffled back so he lay on top of her.  
He lifted his head to look at her in the eye, his pupils dilated.  
“That was pretty hot when you were standing there at the door without a shirt on and Jerry was looking at you,” he confessed, his voice breaking.  
“Good to know, papacito—”  
He lunged back down again; the edges of his teeth nibbled upon the spot between the base of her neck and her shoulder. She gasped at the feeling.  
Her hands glided around his hips. She tried to caress his belly but it was difficult from his laying on top of her. He nibbled on her again and again, and each time she gasped at that light grinding sensation upon that sensitive part of her skin. That damp feeling between her legs returned with each gnash and grind from the very front of his mouth. When she focused on her moistening clit, she came right back to the front.  
He lifted his head again.  
“I got an idea.”  
He rolled off of her and back onto the other side of the bed. She sat upright as he gestured over to his overnight bag.  
“Go into my things and you will see a little Tupperware container inside of my bag—”  
“What's in it?”  
“Pastrami.”  
Mia scrambled off of the bed and onto the carpet to open his overnight bag. She delved through his clothes until she found the small rectangular box with the red lid on top and the slices of pastrami on the inside. She stripped off the lid and set it down on the top of the table next to her head; she rose to her feet with the container in the palm of her hand. Lars lay there in the middle of the bed on his back so he had spread out his arms and legs as if offering himself to her; he pointed to his mouth.  
“Stuff it into my mouth until I can't speak,” he ordered. She hoisted one knee onto the bed next to his hip and dangled the first strip of pastrami into his mouth. His eyes rolled towards the back of his head as the edge of the slice touched his tongue; he closed his mouth once she stuck it in all the way and moved it into the left side of his mouth like a squirrel storing an acorn. He pointed at his mouth again and she repeated the process three more times. He then waved at her to stop so he could chew it with his eyes closed. He swallowed it down and let his mouth hang open so he could let out an aroused sigh.  
“Come on—be a good girl. Give it to me. You can do better than that.”  
She peered down at the container while chewing on her bottom lip. He called her a good girl. There was no way she could let him get away with that.  
Keeping the container in her hand, she climbed back onto the bed and climbed over his hips so the crotch of her pants hovered over the waist of his jeans. She picked up a large slice of pastrami with her right hand and clasped her left hand onto his belly, which already protruded a bit from his body from being so full.  
“Fuck being good,” she snarled in a husky voice. “Eat, you little fuck. You hairy little man. You little pig.”  
She crammed the slice into his mouth before he could say another word. She followed it up with another, and another, and another, and another, and by then the last slice, his mouth was stuffed full. Her tongue lashed out of her mouth as she crawled over his body and hovered over his face. He stared hard into his eyes as he kept his lips cherry pursed together: he looked as though he was holding his breath while his lower jaw shifted at such a slow pace. The inside of his throat and the flesh underneath his chin bulged out as he swallowed it all down in one large gulp. He let out a low whistle through the slight part in his lips and the blush upon his cheek bones grew richer in its pinkish tone; she could smell the black pepper on his breath; his eyes singed into her mind like a pair of cigarettes.  
“Also, who you calling a pig?” he croaked out. He raised his arm to give the roll on her waist a gentle squeeze. She glanced down in time to see his fingers crawling over the roundest part of her waist. He lifted himself into an upright position, never taking his eyes off of her.  
“Who—the royal brass fuck are you calling a pig?”  
He pressed his hands on either side of her face as he planted his lips unto hers and shoved his tongue into her mouth. She could feel the smooth skin of his belly brushing up against hers. She shot out her legs so she could slide closer to him and that warm full feeling inside of him. Her fingers entwined through the long wavy strands of his hair; she tugged on a clump near the base of his head and he gasped in response. He brought his mouth back to her lips while she brushed her nipples up against his chest. The feel of his skin brought her nipples into raised points. His hands gripped onto her love handles for a light squeeze.  
“Oh—God—soft skin—” he breathed in between kisses; he pulled his head back to let out a low belch that smelled of black pepper and black tea. “Ah, ooh, pardon me!”  
“Bloody hell, you're so fucking rude—” she retorted, tugging on the roots of his hair again before giving him a deep kiss full of tongue; meanwhile, the damp feeling upon her lips moistened even more. Every touch upon her body, every kiss, every minute breath that emerged from his mouth, added to the feeling between her legs even more. It didn't help she was about an inch from his crotch and she had stretched out her legs while sitting on his lap. She couldn't take it anymore.  
She retracted her hands from his hair and his back to undo her jeans. She reached down the waist band of her underwear: the tips of her fingers caressed over the slender hairs growing on her crotch. She touched further and further down until she reached the lips of her vagina.  
Lars glanced down at her hands with his mouth agape and his eyes wide open.  
“Holy—Holy fucking shit—” His voice trembled and broke.  
“Yeah, you like that don't you—niño travieso desagradable—”  
He watched her fingers stroke those wet lips right beneath him until he reached down with one hand, palm facing up, down her underwear to join in with her. She gasped at the light touch of his index finger and middle finger there. Her body quivered and quaked as his two fingers twinned hers in touching herself.  
A knock on the door caught both of them off guard: he yanked his hand back and out of her underwear as if something burned him while she pressed her fingers a little too hard.  
“Ow!” she yelped out, pulling out her hand and lifting her left leg so as to climb off of his lap.  
“Fock—who is it?” Lars called past her.  
“It's Jerry,” his voice floated in through the door.  
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—okay, give us a minute please—!” He let out a loud exasperated sigh as he leaned back on his hands. She rolled onto her bare chest and then lifted her upper body up off of the bed sheet like a lioness. He tossed his hair back from his face and neck: his skin carried that warm glow she was all too familiar with.  
“Fucking hell, that was hot,” he breathed out; his bare chest rose and fell from his being out of breath.  
“I know, right?”  
“I just realized neither of took our shoes off, either.”  
“Good. Anyway, let's—” She kept her gaze fixated on his waist for a few seconds before she resumed her train of thought. “Let's—”  
“Yeah, let's,” he agreed, climbing off the bed to put his shirt back on. Mia followed suit with haste before answering Jerry there at the door.  
“Dammit,” he stated in a flat voice.  
“What's the matter?”  
“Forgot about this.” He picked up the cup of water on the table.  
“It's alright—we can warm up later on—you know, when we're on the road.”


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "princess cakes and touching tea".. sounds like an album name

“So what's the plan again?” asked Lars as he buckled his seat belt in the passenger seat. It was five minutes before eleven when he and Mia had just packed everything back up in the trunk of his car; he had set his cup of tea on top of the radiator back in the room to warm up the water again and then let the bag of black tea steep inside. Meanwhile, she and Jerry were conversing with one another as to how they all would return back home.  
“Mark, Layne, and Jerry will be right behind us all the way up the coast back to Portland,” she started, picking up the car keys from the center console, “and they'll make sure that we don't run out of fuel again. And then, once we get back to the City of Roses, they'll just keep going up to Seattle together. Jerry also told me he and Layne want to join us at the show in January.”  
“Alright! The more the merrier after all.”  
She fired up the engine and he took a small sip from his tea.  
“I just realized I had the tea bag in my pocket the whole time we were making out in there,” he remarked, smacking his lips.  
“Sex tea?”  
“Nah, we were not really fucking or having sex in there, honey pie. More like—I dunno, lap dance tea.”  
“Lap dance tea—touching tea.”  
“Touching tea, that's even better! Because it's vague. It can be like code between you and me.”  
“Touching tea on the lacy part of town.”  
She lifted the parking brake and rolled forward out of the space. Soon, they returned to the main road and halted at the first stoplight in the right lane. Mia adjusted the rear view mirror for herself when Lars spoke again after taking another sip of tea.  
“Do you see what I see?”  
“Where?”  
He pointed out the windshield to the small brick building three doors up the street. Dark shadows fell over the large front windows, but from their spot there before the stoplight, Mia made out the shape of a sign in the window.  
“And?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders; in the reflection of the mirror, she noticed Mark's truck pulling up behind them. He flashed their lights at them.  
Lars peered over at her as he sank down in the seat and rested his knee upon the dashboard.  
“I have got a feeling about that place up there, darling,” he told her. “It's right next to a couple of murals, too.” He flashed her a wink. The light switched to green and they rolled forward. As they came closer, she recognized the words “For Lease” upon the sign, and beneath that was the word “Sold” followed by a phone number. Mia gasped when she recognized the first three letters.  
“Five zero three, that's Oregon—” They slowed down before the curb so she could read the rest of it.  
“Oh, my God, that's Sandra's number! She's expanding already? I thought we were going to wait until she had more money!”  
Lars beamed at her with a twinkle in his eye.  
“That's incredible!” He then gasped and gestured at her with the cup of tea in his hand. “What if she comes down to the Bay Area?”  
“I don't know,” she confessed, pulling away from the curb. “I would have to ask her when I see her again.”  
An excited smile plastered over his face and his chubby cheeks grew a little bit fuller and rounder; he then took a bigger sip of tea and rested the back of his head against the head rest. She spotted another bakery up ahead, on the same side of the street, and with a wooden sign hanging over the front door.  
“Is that a Swedish bakery?” Lars saw it, too.  
“Is it?”  
“Yeah, it has a circle over the 'a'—we have those in our language, too, given we're so close.”  
“Would you like a little something for being so good this morning?” she offered him, fluttering her eyelashes.  
“Darling, you know I would, especially when you get all like that.” He flashed her a wink as she pulled up the curb and parked the car.  
The bakery was a cozy single bright room crammed with shelves which in turn had been crammed with displays of all manner of cakes, cookies, and pastries, some fresh out of the ovens in the back, some sealed up in their cellophane cases; in a way, it reminded Mia of the shop she and Mikayla visited up in Georgetown, given the size and the warmth from everything. Her eyes scanned over one of the shelves under the glass display on the left side of the room: the round princess cakes with green and pink marzipan, the Napoleons, the chokladbolls, and the chocolate flat cakes and pies and tarts.  
“Oh, man,” Lars clasped his hands to either side of his face. The woman at the counter greeted the both of them with a friendly smile.  
“Anything in particular?” she asked them.  
“God, where do I begin… I feel like I'm back home and I just want to eat all of these,” he said, eyeing the chocolate balls covered in pearl sugar resting on the platter before him, and she burst out into laughter.  
“A couple of Napoleons,” started Mia, talking through her chuckles, and in turn, the clerk put on her plastic gloves and picked up a paper sack from behind the counter, “—some danishes, for my little Danish boy here—”  
“You're Danish, really?” She glanced up at him from behind the counter while she reached in for a strawberry danish.  
“Yes, I am. Born and raised, right across the Øresund. I came here to the United States about five years ago.”  
“Oh, that's so cool! Hence why it feels like home.”  
“Exactly!”  
“Anyways, what else would you guys like?”  
“A few of these princess cakes over here, just because they're so indulgent and—sensual,” Mia continued, turning her head to him.  
“And on this day, I became a prince,” he stated in a bold voice, pressing his hands to his hips. The two women burst out laughing again before Mia asked for a pair of sugar cookies, one for each of them. Within time, she paid fifteen dollars for their treats and they bode her farewell upon stepping back outside to the car. Mark's truck was parked up the busy main street and Lars waved at them with his free hand before he climbed back into the car. Mia closed the door right as another big pick up truck blared past them.  
“Smells like touching tea in here,” she noted, sticking the key back into the ignition.  
“My kind of smell,” he remarked, reaching into the paper sack on his lap for his cookie, a large butter cookie in the shape of a snow man with shiny white icing and spots of black icing for the buttons, the eyes, and the top hat.  
“You're actually going to eat it now?” she asked.  
“I don't see why not,” he replied with a shrug; he then reached down in between his legs to put their treats in a safe place. “After I nearly froze to death last night, I'm not taking any chances.”  
“What are you saying?” She hung there with her hand over the ignition and a curious expression upon her face. He showed her a warm, relaxed smile but he had a little twinkle in his eye.  
“No,” she argued, and yet she could not resist showing him a grin.  
“Yes. Five more to our little verbal agreement.” He held up a hand and spread out his fingers like a starfish.  
“Thirty five pounds, are you out of your mind?”  
“Maybe. But—I know how you are, honey pie. How you always want to touch me. And like I said, after last night, there's no way I am going through that again.”  
“That was your head that got wet, though,” she pointed out.  
“Yeah, but the rest of me was warm. And you were holding onto me pretty tightly, too. Also—and you heard this from me, too, so you can quote me on it—I'll be going on tour in a few months. I have been told if I really want to perform well, I will put on a little more.”  
“Oh! Oh, really?”  
“Yes. Oh, yeah. You have seen me after I cram my gullet silly after all. And I get it, too: you yourself can stay at our ceiling of thirty, but—I want to be bumped up to thirty-five.”  
“Deal.”  
She stuck out a pinky finger for him and he entwined his left pinky to round out the promise.  
“Now, get fat,” she ordered, starting up the engine. She waited a minute for a clearing in the traffic and then she pulled out to the main street. At one point, she glanced into her mirror to the sight of Mark's truck lurking in the left lane about two car lengths behind them. Soon, they crossed the vast draw bridge over the strait which connected the gray waters of the bay to the vast ocean. A part of her wanted her and Lars to purchase a house boat and live out on the ocean for the rest of their lives, but then again, there was the potential of sailing too far away from all the good food on land and running into a harsh winter storm.  
Large drops of rain began to fall onto the windshield once again.  
“Oh, did Layne and Jerry ever find out about a leak in my door?” asked Lars, bringing the back of his hand to his mouth out of politeness.  
“I don't think they did because Jerry never brought it up,” she confessed as they headed off of the bridge and into the northern side of town. “If you're concerned, we can pull over real quick and find something to block it in case it happens again.”  
He peered his shoulder back to the window behind Mia's seat.  
“Yeah, I see a bit of moisture on the top of the door, like right in the closest corner of the window—like right behind your head. I say we do.”  
She steered the car to the curb before a bright yellow stucco four story theater with brick red trimming.  
“What do you think we should block it with?” she asked him. He paused for a second, then—  
“My pants!”  
“Your pants?”  
“The ones I split last night—they're in my bag, but I can get them real quick and cram one hem into the edge there and then tie the other side over the 'oh, shit' handle.”  
“What're you waiting for?”  
He scrambled to unbuckle the seat belt and bolted out from the car with his cookie still hand. Mia remained there in the driver's seat and watched him in the mirror right as the rain fell down more in a light mist; she flicked the lever to the first notch to switch on the windshield wipers on the low setting. The lid of the trunk obscured her view for a moment and then it closed again. The rear passenger door flung open and Lars ducked into the back seat with the jeans in hand. She couldn't see what he was doing but she heard him licking his lips and breathing through his mouth: it took her a second to realize he held his cookie in between his teeth so he could use both hands. She heard him rustling through his pocket for something, which was followed by a metal clink and then the slow finesse of slicing fabric. He sighed through his nose as he worked with haste.  
“Would you like me to roll down the window?” she suggested.  
“No, no, we're good,” he assured her in a clear voice. He climbed out of the back seat, and into the rain, and closed the door. He returned to the front seat with tiny droplets of rain water in his bangs and over the top of his head and showed her the sugar cookie in hand.  
“Not one time set my cookie down!” he declared, taking a small bite from the top of the snowman's head.  
“Of course, you bite his head off,” she cracked and he chuckled with his mouth full.  
“I should tell you this, too, darling.”  
“What's that?”  
“When we were in the hotel, one of the concierges told me this town is an absolute mecca for art. Like the biggest littlest town in the state to host the arts.”  
“Really?”  
“Oh, yes. For example—” He pointed out the window at the building in front of their car. “—I forget what this place here is called, but he told me this is the home to the Eureka Symphony. And—we passed it, but I guess Old Town is part of the downtown area.”  
“Would you like to go back?” she suggested.  
“Nah, it's raining. He told me it's a lot of walk around kind of stuff. We can always come back another time, though. There is plenty of time between now and our little trip to Astoria, after all.”  
“This is true.”  
“He also added the trip up the coast—like beyond this—is art central.”  
“And Eureka is just the beginning.”  
“Eureka is just the beginning and I have a feeling you and I are going to have a lot of fun on our little trip here.”  
Mia pulled away from the curb right as the rain fell down upon the roof of the car in sheets. Once they reached the northern outskirts of town and the first signs pointing to Redwood National Forest, Lars finished his cookie and nestled further down inside of his seat with his hands upon his belly.  
“Mmm—oof. I feel myself getting rounder already.”  
“I will be the judge of that,” she insisted. Keeping her eyes on the road, she reached over with her right hand to lift up the bottom of his shirt to reveal the roll forming around his waist. Careful not to hurt him, she used her thumb and her index finger to pinch a piece of the skin underneath his belly button.  
“And once again, darling—I cannot spare an inch.”  
“It's pinch an inch, baby,” she corrected.  
“Whatever.”  
She giggled as she gave him a light loving pat.  
“You are getting a little bit, though,” she pointed out. “Eighteen pounds now.”  
“Eighteen. I'm eighteen—”  
He kept the bottom of his shirt over his belly button all the way up to the first rest stop, a little picnic area in the woods. Mia pulled into the nearest parking space and before she switched off the engine, she turned to him again.  
“Do you need to use the bathroom at all?”  
“Oh, no. But I will waiting right here, though.”  
She picked up her purse before she stepped out into the pouring rain and jogged towards the low wooden buildings, and the ladies' room on the left side. She entered the bright room with the pink tiles and three stalls, and headed to the one in the middle. She hung up her purse on the hook, peeled off her jeans and her underwear, and—  
“Oh, no,” she muttered to herself, or perhaps it was a good thing as she reached up to open her purse and fish out a pad. Once she lined the inside of her underwear with it, then came the dull pains inside of the lower side of her belly. She grimaced at the pulsating feeling as she stood up and pulled her pants back on over her hips. She flushed using the sole of her shoe and then headed out to the sinks to wash her hands.  
Mia stared at herself in the mirror, at the girl with the rosy glow about her face staring back at her as the warm water washed over her palms and the backs of her hands to rid of the foamy, fruity smelling soap. She switched off the water and heard her parents' voices echoing inside of her mind. But then again, it was all behind her: she had Lars to care for now. She dried off her hands with a couple of brown paper towels and returned to the rain and Lars' car.  
When she climbed back into the driver's seat again, Lars tossed his head back again and showed her a playful smirk.  
“So, tonight—er—if we're not staying in a hotel, shall we sleep in the back and in the other direction?”  
“Your feet might get wet, though.”  
“Not necessarily. I crammed my pants in there fairly well and we've got those blankets in the back.”  
“I want you to be warm and dry, though,” she insisted.  
“Well, of course. But—trust me, though. And are you feeling alright? You looked—flushed, like flustered almost.”  
He blinked a few times before his eyes widened in shock.  
“Oh, no, don't tell me—”  
“I got my period, don't worry.”  
He sighed with relief and bowed his head.  
“Oh, good. That freaked me out for a second. I know I've been riding my dick up your cunt, and so—” He hesitated.  
“What?”  
“—you know—I'd rather—oh, never mind. But, nevertheless, kiss me—”  
She leaned forward so as to plant a sweet kiss upon his cherry lips.  
“It might be a little tricky to make love back there 'cause it's such a tight little spot—”  
She paused to ruminate for a moment.  
“Picture it as the time I tied you up in the kitchen.”  
“Ah, yes. That was—that was glorious.”  
“By the way, where are those princess cakes from when the bakery?”  
Lars reached down between his legs for the paper sack on the floor; he picked out one of the pink princess cakes wrapped in cellophane from the inside and held it right before her face.  
“Right here.”  
“Thank you, my prince,” she whispered, taking the cake and switching on the engine again.


	57. Chapter 57

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Though I can't put my hands on you I can feel you now,  
> in the bones and the blood flowing needles on the ground,  
> in the ether I sail to you floating on the fumes.  
> Run aground on the shore for you simple wreckage..."  
> -"Taree", Soundgarden | writing this made me miss Oregon so much

“Jesus Christ Almighty, these trees are massive,” was all Lars could say upon their arrival in the outskirts of Redwood National Forest. He peered out the window with his mouth full of a Napoleon in awe of the towering brick red trunks congregated on either side of the highway; thick clusters of dark green needles formed part of a canopy overhead; lush evergreen shrubs lay upon the forest floor, all around the bases of the trees. He took a bite of the three layers of puff pastry interspersed by the custard cream as he watched the trees whir past on his side of the road.  
“All I know is—these trees live a long time,” remarked Mia, who caught a glimpse out her window every so often to see them for herself, and all the while she managed close attention to the road before them. “We're talking anywhere from twelve hundred to two thousand years.”  
“That is insane,” he muttered, licking a bit of crème off of the tip of his index finger. “Back home in Denmark, we have a tree called Kongeegen—it's on Sjælland, but that is merely a singular oak tree, though. You know, not a full on cone headed forest.” He took another look out the window before taking another bite.  
“I'd like to be as thick as one of these trees here.” She peered over at him right as he showed her a relaxed smile while holding the Napoleon close to his mouth.  
“I wouldn't be able to put my arms around you, though,” she pointed out. He shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows while never removing his smile.  
“Still—seeing these trees here kind of—make me feel good about what's to come.”  
“Oh, so a bunch of tall trees make you feel good about your tum and your body but I don't?” she teased.  
“They are secondary, anyways,” he corrected himself. “They are the second thing to come along, whereas you will always be first to me.”  
He took a large bite with his eyes closed; when he closed his mouth, he leaned back in the seat and placed his hand on his belly, which he continued to expose to her. She faced the road for a moment before taking another look at the pleasured expression upon his face.  
“Careful, big bellied boy,” she warned, wagging her finger, “you might spoil your dinner later on when we stop in Newport.”  
“Nah,” he insisted with his mouth full, “I am merely warming myself up to what's to come later on.”  
He swallowed the bite, and proceeded to stick the rest of it into his mouth, and sank even further down into his seat. She took another glimpse over at him and licked her lips. Just the way he relished in all the food he had eaten while with her left her wanting more from him. She was eager to stop in Brookings Harbor, right beyond the state line, for another round of snacks and things. The redwood trees stretched onward for several more miles, until they reached a clearing which beheld an enormous view of the ocean to Mia's left; lining the bottom of the view were the bristly tip tops of even more tall trees, all of which sprouted upon the slope on the other side of the guard rail.  
“I kind of want to lean back and relax my stomach a bit,” he confessed; she glimpsed over at him peering out the windshield and her window at the matte dark gray nothing extending out towards the horizon next to them.  
“What's stopping you?” she asked him with a frisky little smirk, hoping to have a little more eye candy on her right.  
“This part of California,” he confessed, his eyes wide with wonder. He lay back in his seat with both hands resting on the top of his belly.  
“Stunning,” she said aloud as the road took a gentle curve into more forest.  
“Absolutely—stunning,” he echoed.  
“Forgotten beauty,” she added, looking over at him right as the ocean disappeared behind the trees. She placed her right hand upon his bare skin and proceeded to move the tips of her fingers in circles right over the roundest, silkiest part. How she wanted to kiss that soft skin.  
He lifted his left hand and held onto the bottom hem of her shirt, and then his fingers squeezed the deposit of flesh over her hip. She bent her spine to the left so as to avoid him, but he kept touching her.  
“Stop—I have to drive!” she insisted and he let out a quiet giggle.  
Soon they cleared the trees and entered a landscape of smooth white sands dotted by the occasional stray evergreen tree. Every so often, the early afternoon sun poke out from over the blanket of striated gray clouds and glistened over the sand. Mia squinted her eyes during a particularly bright spell but need not risk reaching down between her legs and blindly delving through her purse for her sunglasses.  
“It's just incredible,” he noted, lifting himself into an upright position in the seat. Within time, they drove through the tiny hamlet of Klamath, which resided along the Klamath River; at one point, he took another glance out the window at the wide view of the ocean once more. More redwood trees jutted up from behind the guard rail but they both could see the ocean on the other side. Once the trees cleared way for a low ridge of white sand, Lars reached down between his legs for another Napoleon.  
“Easy there,” she patted his shoulder. “Give me one of those—”  
He handed her the first one he picked out with his tongue sticking out from his mouth.  
“Well, aren't you just jolly right now?” she joked, holding the Napoleon before her lips.  
“Jolly? Is that what you called me?”  
“Yes! You are very jolly! Just look at that little potbelly! I'm gonna stuff so many chips into your mouth—”  
“Chips?”  
“Chips. When we get to Brookings Harbor, oh, yes. But—BUT! First thing we do when we get there, though?”  
He raised his eyebrows in anticipation.  
“Gonna slap your fat ass.”  
“Oh—ooh—ooooh ho ho! This trip just became even more interesting.”  
They both took bites of their Napoleons in unison and pressed onward through another round of redwood trees, followed by Crescent City, the home of a lone light house looking out to the gray to their left, quaint cute houses, a series of tide pools, and even more lush greenery about the landscape. They passed a sign reading the next exit would take them to Pebble Beach.  
“Wanna stand out on the beach and be a merman for a minute?” she asked him, licking the chocolate and the crème from her fingers.  
“I don't see why not.”  
They switched off of the highway and took the road down to the smooth white sands coated in a fine layer of pebbles. She took the space next to the entrance down to the trail towards the water. He clambered out of the car, still with the bottom of his shirt pulled up to his chest, and bolted to the low brick wall separating the parking lot from the beach. He closed his eyes and took a deep inhale of chilled ocean air through his nose; he let out a loud exhale through his open mouth. As she slid out of the driver's seat, she hesitated there for a moment as the crisp damp winds trickled through her hair and down her neck and spine, the aroma of salt hung in the air around her, and the continuous rush from the tides before her filled her ears. He extended his arms out as if striking a cross shaped pose, and his hair billowed behind his head; she shut the door and hurried up behind him to find his shirt still had not dropped down to his waist.  
“I have been wanting to do this for almost a hundred miles—” she confessed. She pursed her lips together, and lay them upon the spot of his skin right over his belly button, and blew.  
“Gah! That tickles!” he shrieked over the roar of the ocean and the sharp noise from the raspberry, but she did it again and again. He dropped his arms, and clasped his hands to her hips, and proceeded to tickle her. She burst out into a fit of furious giggles and he followed suit with a loud cackle. She threw her arms around his waist and tugged down on his shirt. He bowed his head over her as he held her close.  
“Come on, sexy boy—let's go—” She patted his chubby cheeks and darted back to the driver's side of car. He followed her back into the passenger seat.  
They backed out of the space right as Lars buckled back up and shook his head about so his long hair dangled in his face.  
“WOO! YEAH!” he bellowed in a voice that resembled to James. He tossed his head back to show her an excited look.  
“What's next?”  
“Next? The state line, baby boy!”  
“Come on, baby, let's get it on!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together. They returned to the highway for the remaining twenty miles along the coast, and then came the sign bearing “Welcome to Oregon”, followed by a green sign with “Entering the County of Curry,” which meant they were another two hundred miles from Newport.  
“Oh, it's good to be home!” she declared with relief, clapping her hands twice.  
They soon stopped for a round of fuel, Mia to change her pad, and the promised potato chips in Brookings Harbor, and then proceeded onward up the Oregon Coast, a series of high rocks smoothed by the winds and the waters in conjunction with windswept pine trees that stretched on for miles. Every so often, when she reached into the chip bag, she slipped on into his mouth all while keeping her eyes on the road.  
“This is even more amazing,” he pointed out as they wound around a curve in the cliff. Past his window stood a steep incline with stubby shrubs; at the very top stood even more tall evergreen trees, weathered and darkened by the ocean. Past her window were the incoming breakers lined with a slender line of white saline froth, but they never saw the rest of them from the guard rail and the edge of the road.  
“Spectacular, in fact,” she added, reaching into the bag in between them for a chip for herself.  
At one point, the cliffs had begun to drop down, and soon they smoothed out into vast plains of sand and pebbles. Monoliths of black jagged volcanic rock jutted out from the shallow waters. They passed through the community of Gold Beach, and stopped at a small shop of beach glass next to an art supply shop. Lars picked a pendant of soft pink frosted glass accompanied by a small silver charm in the shape of an octopus from the front display rack and held it out to her in the palm of his hand.  
“For you, my love,” he whispered to her before giving her a kiss on the lips.  
“Of course.” He helped her tie it around her neck; he then turned her around to see it and beamed.  
“Yes,” he stated, and paid ten dollars for it up front.  
He then took her next door for a small pad of paper and a kit of graphite pencils.  
“Wanna draw me later on?” he offered her.  
“Gladly.”  
They returned to the road to head up the next twenty five miles to the quaint town of Port Orford, followed by Bandon, and then Coos Bay. Mia stopped there for a late afternoon snack of coffee and another pair of pink princess cakes.  
“Cheers,” he declared, and they clinked their cups together before taking sips in unison.  
As the daylight from behind the clouds began to wane, the sea cliffs to their right soon gave way to dark, foreboding mountains, most of which carried light dusted caps of fresh snow. Lars shivered in his seat as he reached behind his seat for their coats; Mia pulled over onto the side of the road to slide on her coat. It hadn't rained and hence the old pair of jeans remained dry the whole trip up the coast line, but the streaked clouds up ahead, hanging over the next beach town of Florence made her wonder if they could hold up for the next fifty miles to Newport.  
He ate his princess cake at a slow pace; in the fading light and in every other glance over at him, she watched his lower jaw gyrate in steady rhythm.  
“Getting full?” she asked with a teasing grin.  
“Actually, no,” he admitted with his mouth full. He swallowed as he took a glimpse at her. “I don't feel full at all.”  
“What would you like for dinner then?”  
“I'm feeling tacos.”  
“Tacos!”  
“Nice big fat tacos—” He slipped the last bite of princess cake into his mouth and wiped his hands together.  
As they neared closer and closer to Newport, darkness began to fall upon the coast line: the shallow pools of water upon the flat beaches gaped out from the white sands like black holes and the tufts, turrets, and monoliths of volcanic rock fell with their evening shadows. A rich fuchsia glow from the setting sun painted the sky to their left.  
“Darling, I must confess to you,” he started. She took another glimpse at him and the rosy pink color from the sunset bathed over his face; “if this is the edge of the world, then I must say the world has no idea.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Well, everyone talks about the California coast, but almost no one pays any attention to states above them. I can see Washington taking off, though, given all the music up there. But Oregon—there's something knitted down about Oregon. Something—I want to say, precious.”  
“Precious, like—”  
“—us,” he finished. She took another look at him right as a thick rain cloud obscured part of the sunset and the pink glow faded off of his face. His eyes were wide and beheld a soft twinkle in them. She thought he was about to kiss her, but he never did all the way up to Newport.  
She pulled into the tiny warm Mexican restaurant not too far from the light house and they both indulged in fresh tacos of ground meat, cheese, crisp lettuce, and pico de gallo, fresh handmade refried beans, and spicy rice. At the end of dinner, Lars reclined in the passenger seat to relax his stomach. She beamed at him as she took her seat next to him.  
“My goodness,” she commented as he lay his hands on his bloated belly. She closed the car door behind her and they were engulfed in darkness.  
“Ah—”  
“I thought you wouldn't stop,” she confessed.  
“—ooh—oh—”  
“God, you ate so much! And then there was that luxurious margarita—”  
“—oooooh—ohhhh, oh, my word.” She heard him lick his lips. “It was so—so good, though—they just—they just—mmm—”  
“Too good, wasn't it?” She leaned over his face in the darkness. “Mmm, God, all the little sounds you make when you are full are so sexy.”  
“No, really—I've got—I've got to—or I'm going to—” He was interrupted by something, followed by the light clink of something upon the windshield. It ricocheted off of the glass and whizzed past her ear, but instead hit the top of her left shoulder.  
“Ow!”  
“Are you alright?” he asked her. She groped her shoulder for whatever hit her, but she was unable to find it. He was silent for a moment, and then she heard rustling fabric. In the dim light, she could see him searching his person for something.  
“Wait, what was that?” she asked.  
“—would you believe it was the button on my pants. That's—that's—mm, pardon me—that's three pairs of pants—I've—I've—I have royally fucked up in—two days now.”  
“It's nothing some string won't fix, though, baby boy.” She kissed him on the mouth, and his lips tasted of spices and beans; she picked up an earthy hint of tequila at the end there.  
“How—How—How far is it—from—from—from Portland?”  
“How far?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Let's see, we have the mountain road outside of town—and then we have the interstate going to Salem, and then that fifty mile stretch up to Portland. Er, I would say—a hundred forty miles?”  
“Hundred forty?” he croaked out. He stuck out his tongue and blew a light raspberry. “I—I dunno, honey pie.”  
“We can always take our time,” she whispered, kissing his lips again.  
“Y-You wanna—lay in the back seat?” he stammered.  
“I don't see why not.”  
She started up the car yet again, and she drove them to the small parking lot behind the restaurant where they remained out of sight. They both climbed out of the car again; Lars wobbled a bit but caught himself on the top of the door. He panted and giggled as if he was drunk. He clasped a hand to his belly right as Mia stepped around the back end to catch him around the waist.  
“Oh, Lord,” he breathed out, weakening at the warm full feeling inside of her against him, “I—I—mmm—I really did it this time, didn't I?”  
“You sure did, papacito,” she whispered into his face before planting a third kiss onto his mouth. “Come on, baby—it feels like rain. Let's call it a night.”  
“How are we—we—mmm, God, pardon me, damn beans—how are we going to get in? I tied the—the leak off—and—made it so—that door—won't open for a bit.”  
“Feet first.”  
“Oh, f-fuck, fock, I had to ask.”


	58. Chapter 58

The sound of the rain pattering down upon the roof awoke Mia to a brand new day; she slid her head upon the top of the rolled up blanket which they had made into a pillow and fluttered her eyes open to the gray morning sunlight washing over the whole backseat of the car. Lars, who lay on his side so his back faced her and he faced the back of the seat, continued to breathe heavy with slumber. She wiggled her fingers to find she had put her arms around his waist and held onto his belly: through the fabric of his shirt, she could feel his flesh growing thicker and softer. Going to sleep right after dinner helped matters.  
She licked her lips and swallowed: she needed a drink of water, but she had no intent of climbing out of the back seat of his car to ask for a drink of water from someone in one of the nearby restaurants and cafes around them. The combination of the other two blankets around them cradled them both like a mother's arms and his warm body only beckoned her to stay behind.  
She wiggled her fingers again over the soft fabric of his shirt, but then she slid her hands down his side to the hem of his shirt. Her fingers crawled underneath his shirt to that smooth skin: a triad of slight grooves emerged on the skin on his hip, but she could still feel the hardness of his pelvic bone. She thought of kissing it, but felt their close quarters to be too tight for her to climb off of the seat and adjust herself so her mouth hung over his hip.  
Over the monotonous roar of the rain overhead, she heard a groan from the inside of his throat; he shuffled his head about the blanket making up the pillow. She kissed the under side of his lower jaw and he groaned again. She kissed him which he followed up with a minute groan. She kissed him another five times, and he each time he gave her a groan in return.  
He lifted a hand to his eyes to rub them and sniffled; he paused, staring face on at the back of the seat, and then twisted his neck to look up at the car ceiling and at her out of the corner of his eye.  
“Oh, yeah, that's right,” he grunted out in a broken voice.  
“Are you stuck? Would you like to turn over?” she asked him over the noise of the rain; she ran her hand down along the side of his hip, which started to widen out with the slightest sweep of a curve.  
“Yes, please—if I can, anyways—”  
She inched back towards the edge of the seat but she felt the backs of her thighs hanging off, but he still jerked onto his back with a low grunt. He lay there for a second before he parted his lips and closed his eyes again. She returned her hand to his chest and his belly to relish in his warmth.  
“Oof—God, those margaritas can knock you out silly,” he confessed, rubbing his left eye, “especially when you've—eaten a fair amount over the day.”  
Her mouth hung a mere inch from the side of his face.  
“Kiss me—” she whispered. He rolled his head over the blanket under for her to brush her lips upon his parched, bright red ones.  
“Forgive me, I am—really, really thirsty right now—” He ran a finger along his bottom lip.  
“It's okay, I am, too.” The rain poured down even harder upon the roof overhead: she peered up at the streams of rain cascading over the back window in sheets. He lifted his head to look at their feet; she followed his gaze to find the his jeans, which had held up all through the night, were beginning to soak through with rain water. A single drop formed on the bottom of the denim and hung there, but she knew it was going to drip upon their warm feet at any given moment.  
“Do you—Do you think we should get going?” he asked her, rubbing his eyes again.  
“Might as well. Go where it's dry.”  
“And where there's food.”  
“And where there's food.” She smiled at that: her hand slid down the soft roll forming around his waist, and underneath the waist of his jeans, and to his hip.  
“We should look for string, too.”  
“String… oh, right, right, right, right, right! I overstepped my borders a bit last night. Okay—get my fat Danish ass in gear here. By the way, do we know where Mark, Layne, and Jerry slipped off to?”  
She stopped to search through her memory of Mark's truck behind them. She hadn't paid any attention to any traffic behind her all the way up from the redwoods, but then again, they were on a rural road: she saw no traffic to speak of.  
“They lingered off in my mirror for miles but I hadn't seen them since we stopped at Pebble Beach,” she admitted.  
“Well, fuck. Eh, they're probably on their way up to Seattle right now anyways. Or maybe they beat us there, I dunno.”  
He stifled a burp in his throat before she could feel him pushing himself up onto his elbows.  
“Hang on, let me—let me get up—” she coaxed him, sliding her legs off of the seat and from underneath the blankets. She caught herself on the back of the passenger seat, but she still landed on the carpet beneath the edge of the seat. Lars lifted himself onto his elbows and pushed the blankets off of his body.  
“Holy—Mia, look at me!”  
She eyed his whole body, starting from his thickening thighs wrapped in that dark denim, the waist of his jeans clinging to his prominent hips and emphasizing his belly, which had grown about an inch rounder overnight; she touched his skin around his waist to see if it was any softer.  
“I'm full of shit, though,” he pointed out. She hesitated to look into the stern expression on his face.  
“I'm full of shit,” he repeated and his mouth curled up into a mischievous grin.  
“You are full of shit,” she joked with a chuckle; she pinched her eyes shut as she let out a little laugh.  
“Lars Ulrich is full of shit,” he said; she looked at him again right as his face turned pink. “Absolutely—positively—full of shit.” He started laughing with her for a moment before clearing his throat.  
“But in all seriousness, now that I'm sitting up, I really have got to pee now.”  
They picked themselves up and climbed out of the back of Lars' car, for a brief moment in the pouring rain before slipping back into the front seat. Mia adjusted the pendant he had given her before she picked up the key and started up the car. They stopped at the nearest gas station for the bathrooms, another fill up, big bottles of water, and cups of coffee. They both contemplated going somewhere there in Newport for a bite to eat, but he wanted to hang there to savor their drinks and for the pants in the window to dry out a bit before it was exposed to the rains again.  
“It's still pretty early—and I don't really feel like sitting down to eat yet,” he confessed as they remained there for a moment underneath the awning of the fuel pump. He tossed back his wet head before taking a sip of his latte.  
“What? Lars doesn't feel like eating?”  
“Well—at least—you know—with the proper utensils.”  
“We will get there soon, don't you worry,” she assured him, patting the top of his sinewy thigh.  
“Speaking of which, do you have plenty of money left? I saw you checking the machine over there before you went inside again.”  
“Oh, yeah, I have got money.” It was along the lines of the truth: if she stopped at another machine or at her bank, she risked overdrafting on her account. “I can look for a place for us to eat.”  
“Are you sure? You have bought me all the food on this trip—I should treat you for being such a good driver and tour guide along the coast.”  
“You want to do that?”  
“Yes. It's only fair—we went out to dinner, we should do breakfast again. And I have got forty dollars burning in my pocket, so I may as well treat you.”  
The rain fell from the gray sky in thick sheets to where tiny rivulets ran along the black top to the street. He peered out the window and Mia observed the side profile of his face and that bean shaped scar over his left eye.  
“This reminds me of Copenhagen a little bit,” he noted.  
“From the rain?”  
“Yeah and no. Yeah, because the rain, and no, because everything is so buttoned down even upon daybreak, from the isolation and the darkness.”  
“This is a place the world doesn't think about much after all,” she reminded him.  
“Indeed.” He took another sip of his latte; it had cooled off a bit that he took a much larger drink. He set his cup on his knee and smacked his lips together as if he was about to say something, but he never did.  
“How is your belly?” she asked him.  
“Hm?”  
“How are you—there?”  
“Here?” He placed his free hand upon his waist and she nodded her head. He moved his arm so he could lift his shirt from the waist of his jeans to show her his belly, thickened and made a slight bit fuller and rounder all over. The roll around his waist ever so slightly lay upon the top of his jeans, while the pockets of flesh on his sides softened to where they accentuated the widening of his hips. Growing fuller and smoother, a slender boy with a little extra to add to his physique.  
“I don't know, you tell me,” he teased her as her breathing picked up in pace.  
“Oh—Oh, my—oh, baby—papi—”  
“Pretty hot?”  
“Scorching hot. So sexy… you have got a little—” She ran her fingers along the fine crease on the top part and he flashed her a grin.  
“Ah, haven't lost my muscles, I see.” Her hand glided down his skin towards his waist; she stuck the pad of her thumb into his belly button and then her index finger on the skin underneath to give him a light pinch, and she held a tiny sliver of skin in her fingers.  
“May the inch commence along, darling,” he told her in a husky voice.  
“Let's get you something to eat,” she insisted, moving her hand back to the ignition key; he dropped his shirt with a smug little smirk upon his face.

“Okay, that was good. A little too good, might I add.”  
Lars leaned back in the chair with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his hands resting on the top of his belly. Mia set her chin on the inside of her hand as she gazed on at him from across the table. They both had eaten Belgian waffles with lots of syrup and butter, but he had blueberries upon his stack of three compared to the light dollops of melted butter upon the pair on her plate. He let out a low whistle through his cherry lips before he lifted his arms and hugged himself.  
“I have a feeling these next hundred miles are going to be lovely,” she admitted, picking up her water glass and taking one last sip.  
“How sweet it is, darling,” he told her, beaming; he picked up the bill while never taking the smile from his face.  
“You got it?”  
“Oh, yeah. Plenty.” He pushed a strand of hair behind his ear before climbing to his feet and heading up to the front desk with one hand still right over his stomach. Mia stared out the window at the rain, which continued to fall in torrential fashion, so much a river formed in the storm drain next to the sidewalk. She thought about Marcia and Sonia, and if things were alright at the house. She pictured Kirk walking into the house wondering what the hell happened while he was out for that evening. She wondered if either of them told James and Ashley, or their mother, or Olivia for that matter: she shuddered at the thought of the press going after Wayne, and then Wayne going after her and Lars as a result. She also wondered where was Jason in all of this and if he had any clue what had happened on two nights before while she and Lars were down in Eureka. She also wondered if Dave knew about any of this, too, given his closeness to Marcia and Sonia. She rubbed her nose with the side of her index finger and reached into her purse for her wallet to leave a tip for the waitress: she had enough money to bring them over the mountains down to Corvallis and Albany, and perhaps to Salem, but she would have to stop at the bank there.  
He returned to the table with one hand on the belt of his jeans to hold them up and the other hand holding a tooth pick.  
“Are you ready, min sexet pige?” he asked her with a twinkle in his eye.  
“Yes, I am,” she sweetly replied, closing her purse and slinging it over her shoulder before standing to her feet. He stuck the tooth pick into the corner of his mouth so he could guide her across the carpet to the front door. They bowed their heads as they returned to the car parked underneath the tall oak tree on the other side of the lot. Lars held onto the waist of his jeans the whole walk back.  
“And I still haven't found a bit of string,” he confessed, squinting his eyes against the pouring rain.  
“You have a belt, don't you?” she asked, standing before the driver's side door with the key in her hand.  
“Yeah, but I took it off to augment the other pair of pants over the window—”  
The doors unlocked with a soft click and they opened the car at the same time. He sank into the passenger seat with his hair dripping wet and droplets of rain water streaking down the side of his face. Mia tossed her soaking hair back from her face and looked over at him.  
“I have never seen rain like this,” she confessed.  
“I don't believe I have, either,” he added, rubbing his eyes. She pursed her lips together as he bowed his head to remove the water from his eyes.  
“We are going to have to make a quick stop in maybe Corvallis or Albany—when we get over the mountains—at the bank, or the next machine that we see,” she told him, inserting the key into the ignition.  
“Okay—! Whatever you need to do, honey pie.” He lifted his head a bit so as to buckle his seat belt before they backed out and returned to the street. She followed the signs to Highway 20, the winding two lane road traversing over the mountains before dropping down into the Willamette Valley. The trees along the sides of the road loomed over their heads: they were not nearly as high and foreboding as the redwoods, but they still combined and formed a dark sea all around them as they topped the summit and headed down to Corvallis.  
“So green,” remarked Lars as he scanned the grasslands making up the valley floor and the dense, snow capped forests strewn about the Cascades on the other side of the valley.  
“You should witness it in the spring time,” she told him.  
“And I will, too!”  
“Yes, you will! But it's more lush than you are. Like you just step outside and you almost can't catch your breath because the air is so clean and crisp.”  
The road took one final gentle turn around a bend before straightening out to make up the final stretch before reaching town. She swallowed, knowing she had to stop soon to pad her wallet.  
“I'm good, darling,” he insisted, taking a swig from his water bottle. “Those waffles filled me up pretty well, and we still have food in the trunk, too.”  
“That's good, it's just—you know, I would like to have a little extra change with me.”  
“Oh, yeah, I get it. I totally get it. Especially since you have to work back that money again soon.”  
They passed through the quiet, tightly woven town of Corvallis before meeting up with the interstate highway. The rain continued to fall upon them as the road stretched further and further along the spine of Oregon, comprised of willowy green grasses in spite of the winter time. With every mile ticking down closer and closer to Portland, and with the incoming evergreen trees among the grasslands, the more she wondered about the Bennetts' house and of course her own. She then thought of what she was going to do if she returned to her house and Wayne was there awaiting for her, and for Lars, too. The butterflies flurried about inside of her stomach as they passed a sign reading for exits leading off into Salem. She took the second one off to stop at the nearest bank and the only one she knew of that had a machine out front.  
She withdrew a hundred dollars and was met with the overdraft message upon the blue screen, and soon she would receive a letter in the mail telling her the exact statement. But she slipped the five twenty dollar bills into her wallet and put it back into her purse as she returned to the car with the rain at her back.  
They returned to the freeway and soon passed the sign reading “the 45th Parallel; Halfway Between the Equator and North Pole.”  
“Wouldn't that be bitchin' as all hell?” Lars wondered aloud.  
“What's that?”  
“If you said you lived right on the forty-fifth parallel of the earth?” He then tucked the tooth pick into his jeans pocket.  
“It'd be—crazy. Like—someone asks you 'where do you live?' and you say 'I live halfway between the equator and the north pole of the earth.'” She was distracted by the road and her own thoughts, but Lars went right with it, clapping his hands and showing off a big excited grin. She couldn't help but think of herself as that, either. She lived in the halfway point between Wayne and Lars, the intense girth of her husband looming behind her and the small lover from the cold white north right next to her. She saw the comparison in everything there in Oregon, and the more she tried not to think about it, the more comparisons she made note of the remaining fifty miles.  
“Ah, Portland,” Lars announced as the frigid snow capped point of Mount Hood emerged into their view from behind the rain clouds. “We meet again, and for good reason.”  
They wound through the southern side of town, past her neighborhood and on towards Multnomah and the Bennetts' house. A nagging feeling hung in the back of her mind as they turned off onto the three lane boulevard which would eventually take them out to Mount Hood. She almost put herself onto autopilot as they turned onto the side street and rolled to the house, where Kirk, Marcia, Sonia, and Jerry congregated in the front yard; Mark's truck had parked at the curb.  
“What the hell?” Lars wondered aloud.  
“How did they get here?” she followed up as they halted right at the curb.  
“There they are,” she heard Kirk say. She switched off the engine and they both climbed out of the car in unison. Lars squinted his eyes against the light mist falling from the sky overhead.  
“What's going on?” he demanded.  
“Oh, man, you guys missed it the other night!” Kirk declared.  
“What happened?”  
“Some crazy dude came to the house the other night, screaming and yelling and carrying on, and fucking broke a lamp and a window!”  
Lars gaped at him. “Are you serious?”  
“Dead serious!”  
Mia rounded the trunk of the car to meet up with Marcia and Sonia, both of whom had a spooked expression upon their faces.  
“Hang on, hang on,” she began, lowering her voice with haste, “—shit, I'm starting to talk like Lars now. Anyways, Marcia, I thought you said he kicked in the door.”  
“He did,” she replied in a near whisper over Kirk and Lars' excited voices. “And he broke a lamp. He didn't break a window, though.”  
“But Kirk said—”  
“We know what Kirk said,” Sonia stopped her. “But he didn't break a window.”  
“Why'd he say Wayne broke a window, though?”  
She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.  
“I don't know. But you can look if you'd like, Mia. There are no broken windows anywhere on this house.”  
“Also what's Jerry, Layne, and Mark doing here?”  
“Jerry remembered you and me,” said Marcia, “all I can say is I guess he got word from Dave—I guess Dave was here the other night, too, that's probably why Kirk left when he did—that Sonia and I were in trouble and he tracked us down using the bakery's address.”  
“That's why we didn't see them on the way up the coast,” Mia concluded, “they got ahead to check up on the two of you to make sure everything was alright.”  
“—ergo, fuck that,” Jerry was saying to Lars and Kirk.  
“What I want to know is—do Mikayla or Olivia know about this?”  
“They don't,” Sonia promised. “And as far as we know, neither do James and Ashley. We did call the cops, though, just because we had to.”  
“What about my house? Is everything okay there?”  
“We went over there—yesterday,” recalled Sonia, “and Wayne wasn't home, but I wouldn't dare risk it, though. Given how—horrible he was to us—going over there right now is a risk could probably get you both killed.”  
“What about your parents' house?” asked Marcia, folding her arms over her chest. “Can't you go to them?”  
“No, they don't want to talk to me anymore.”  
“Because of Lars? What the fuck. I mean, really.”  
“And—he and I were planning on spending New Year's—here, in Portland, before I go back to work. I don't want to have to explain it to him.”  
“Explain what to me?”  
The three of them turned to see Lars himself standing right behind him with a piece of paper in hand.  
“All of—this, that happened,” Mia sputtered.  
“No need, darling,” he assured her, “Jerry already did and he gave me this officer's number.” He showed her the piece of paper with the phone number scribbled on one side. “He told me if anything happens at your house, ring him up and they will come and take that fucker away in handcuffs.”


	59. Chapter 59

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I want you.  
> I want to know the things you did that we do, too.  
> I want you.  
> I want to hear he pleases you more than I do.  
> I want you.  
> I might as well be useless for all it means to you.  
> I want you.  
> Did you call his name out as he held you down?  
> I want you.  
> Oh no my darling, not with that clown.  
> I want you..."  
> -"I Want You", Elvis Costello

“I am more than positive that this is nothing a little glue will not fix,” Lars assured Sonia as he helped her piece the broken lamp back together on the couch. The sun begun to hang low over the cloud covered Cascade Mountains to the west: every so often, a huge beam of golden late afternoon sunlight pierced through the clouds and lit up the whole living room, so he could help her pick up the tinier shards of broken ceramic from the top of the cushion. Mia, meanwhile, took a seat next to Marcia on the love seat opposite from them, both of them with drinks in hand; the former had her bottle of water while the latter had a glass of red wine which Kirk had brought over on the night of the incident.  
Marcia had shown Lars and Mia the dent in the front door before then, and she was in disbelief that her husband could do such damage to an otherwise solid door.  
“I mean, this guy was huge, too,” Kirk had said to Lars while he knelt down before the edge of the door, “—according to them, anyways.”  
“Royally fucked up the doorknob, too,” he noted, glancing up at Kirk as he picked out two bent screws from the plaque sealing the doorknob to the panel. “We all should refer to him as 'Doorknob' just for that.”  
Mia laughed out loud at the nickname but deep down, she recoiled at the whole grand scheme of things. All she could do was sit there on the love seat next to her best friend with the bottle of water in hand.  
“Kirk and I were talking,” Marcia started in a low voice as the sun broke again, “that we should ask Dave to be on the look out for you and Lars in the case he comes back again. Wayne did say he'd be back, too. Like around New Year's, so keep your eyes peeled around then.”  
“Why Dave?”  
“Because he's ferocious. He's a fighter—he can kick Wayne's—” she mouthed his name. “—he can kick his ass. As good as Jerry's intentions are, calling the cops are just going to make it worse and Lars is going to have questions.”  
Mia gasped.  
“Oh, yeah, that's right!”  
“What's that?”  
“When I went to their show last month, and Lars and I were walking back to the hotel, he told me Dave once beat up a guy who was going to come after him.”  
“Oh, my God, really?”  
“Yeah. Dave did some serious damage to this poor bastard, too. Just imagine what he'd do to Way—I, I mean, Doorknob.”  
“Doorknob!” Lars exclaimed, never taking his eyes off of the pile of broken ceramic before him, and right as the sun dipped behind the clouds again.  
“And yes, Dave already agreed,” Marcia assured her in a near whisper.  
“Okay, good.”  
“He's also heading up to Seattle right now with Mark, Layne, and Jerry, but he'll be back—let's see, today's… Sunday—so he'll be back here in Portlandia in like two days. He told me and Sonia he'll be spending New Year's on the road.”  
“So what does that mean?”  
“It means you and Lars are gonna be soloing it for our last day of vacation and then for our first day back to work. By the way, did James and Ashley ever get a hold of either of you?”  
“James and Ashley are still in the Bay Area,” said Lars from across the room; he lifted his gaze for a brief moment to look at Marcia as he held two particularly large shards of rounded ceramic in either hand.  
“Can we just take a moment to appreciate the way in which Mia's little boy toy has perched himself over here right now?” Sonia nodded her head at him. At some point, Lars had seated himself onto his knees there on the couch cushion and spread his thighs a bit so it looked as though he had jumped onto the couch in the form of a power slide: the bottom hem of his shirt hugged his roll around his waist, and Mia couldn't help but giggle at the sight of him.  
“You almost look like you're about ready to go 'por qué?' really loud,” she laughed.  
“'Por qué'? No, no, no, no—” He switched the shard in his left hand over to his right to wave it off. “It's 'hvorfor', darling. Hvorfor.” He tilted his head back so he faced the ceiling. “Hvorfor! HVORFOR!”  
And he pinched his eyes shut at the last time, and all three women burst out laughing.  
“I like the round little belly poking out from under his shirt, too,” Marcia gestured to his waist.  
“Yeah, he's been staying pretty well fed these past two weeks,” Mia pointed out, bringing her water to her mouth to take a sip. “And his parents' house and with me—oh, boy, with me.”  
Lars licked his lips and squinted at her, or perhaps he squinted at her because the sun had poked through the clouds once again and shone into his eyes.  
“Yeah, I'll say—cakes and cookies and all manner of pastries to try and fatten me up and make me all porky—”  
“I prefer the term 'pleasingly plump', baby boy,” said Mia with a wink. Marcia and Sonia glanced at one another right as the former took a sip of wine and the latter fitted two pieces together in her hands.  
“And not to sound rude or anything, but our sister's been sustaining a little collateral damage, too, Marsh,” Sonia remarked in a sing song voice.  
“Yeah—oh, no, I don't think it's rude,” Marcia answered, clasping her right hand onto the base of the wine glass and then tossing her hair back from her face. “They're getting heavy together. I can just imagine that being so romantic and so hot.”  
“Getting fat together, yes,” he pointed out, “James, Kirk, and I, however, are going to grow old together.”  
“The three of you and not Jason?” Sonia looked at him hurt.  
“If Jason hangs around with us for longer than Cliff has, then yes. Hell to the yes. Speaking of which, where is Jason?”  
“We have no idea,” confessed Marcia. “Kirk has his number but he doesn't think he's home.”  
“Want me to get the glue?” suggested Sonia.  
“Of course!” he replied, flicking his bangs out from his eyes. “It is nothing a bit of heavy duty super glue cannot fix, Sonia dear.”  
She rose out of her seat to fetch a bottle of glue from the kitchen. Marcia took one sip of her wine before climbing to her feet and following her sister into the other room. Mia stood up as well but ambled towards Lars.  
“And remember what I said, too,” she added in a low voice, wagging a finger at him, “'fat' means you look uncomfortable while 'chubby' means you're round and with a sweet shape. Therefore—pleasingly plump.”  
She patted his belly while staring into his face; he kept his head bowed so his bangs obscured part of his eyes. The corners of his mouth curled up a tiny bit so as to show her a small smile.  
“I feel you want to go back to the house and have a little fun,” he confessed in a low voice. “But I don't really want to leave Sonia here with this to fix by herself.”  
“I've got it from here,” Sonia herself said as she re-entered the room with a glue gun in hand.  
“Are you sure?” he asked her as she brushed behind Mia and returned to her seat on the couch.  
“Oh, yeah. You two baby dolls have a little time alone at the house—you have that pocket knife Dave gave you, right?”  
He reached into his pocket for it and she showed him a thumbs up.  
“You guys might want to use the kitchen door, though,” she advised, leaning over the arm of the couch to plug in the glue gun into the outlet near the base of the wall. She returned to an upright position and pushed her hair back from her face.  
“The kitchen door and then double back through the gate to the street?” Mia followed along.  
“Yeah, we're gonna have to—totally do something about that dent in the door these next couple of days. Like, really, this lamp is the least of our problems right now. And it's almost New Year's, too, so I doubt most of the hardware places 'round here will be open for very long until after then. It could be—a couple of weeks before we get a proper doorknob.” Sonia snickered at Lars' nickname for Wayne.  
“Doorknob,” he stated again.  
“Doorknob!” she echoed.  
After giving Marcia, Sonia, and Kirk all hugs good night, Mia led Lars out the kitchen door to the small backyard behind the house and around the side to the rickety picket fence separating the yard from the lot next door; on the side of the house stood a low gate, the top about as high as Mia's hip, with a metal lock with a bit of rust corroding on one side.  
“It's been a while since I've been back here, so all I know is we have to lift the gate itself as we're unlocking it,” she told him, holding onto the metal bar near the top of the wood. She lifted it up as she slid the stop inside of the lock and giving it a little shake to make sure it was undone all the way.  
“And jiggle it, too, by the looks of it,” he added as the gate swung open in front of them. She stepped out of the yard first and he followed with his hands stuffed into his pockets; she turned back around to lock the gate from the other side. They strode across the yard to Lars' car parked at the curb when he stopped right at the edge of the sidewalk.  
“Wait, today's Sunday, right?” he asked as she took the key out of her coat pocket.  
“Yeah. Why?”  
“Your car is still at the airport, isn't it?”  
“I have one more day off—we can do it tomorrow.”  
“Oh, okay, good.”  
They climbed into the front seats of the car and drove back to the blue and white house on the southern end of town; Mia had a feeling she would find Wayne's car parked in the driveway, but once they turned the corner, the stretch of concrete before her garage door stood barren and deserted. She sighed through her nose with relief as she took the spot near the front door of the house.  
“Home sweet home,” he stated, “or rather—hjem kære hjem.”  
“Mi casa es su casa,” she told him, unfastening her seat belt and picking her purse off of the floor.  
“Let's go inside and get down.” He flashed her a wink before climbing out of the car and into the incoming chilly evening. A strong breeze blew their hair back over their faces; Mia delved through her purse in the dim light for her house key and found it right next to her diaphragm. She unlocked the front door and expected the house to feel cold and barren with that dry feeling that no one had been home in a while. Quite the contrary: upon walking into the front foyer, the carpet squelched underneath the soles of their shoes and the front of the house had that faint earthy odor of mildew. She strode into the kitchen to flick on the light to find the linoleum covered in a fine layer of water. She spotted the refrigerator and freezer doors standing wide open. Lars joined her at the entrance of the kitchen, as stunned as her.  
“What the hell?” he wondered aloud; she glanced at him right as he gaped at the sight of the refrigerator. “Oh, no.”  
“Oh, yeah. It looks like—someone broke in—took the food out of the fridge, and—left it open.”  
“So whatever is left in there is now—ruined.”  
“Apparently so. I didn't want to have to come home and mop my kitchen floor but it looks like it.”  
“No.” He stopped her.  
“No?”  
“No. No way. I will do it. You have been driving all day so it's only fair if I did it.”  
There was a knock on the door and they both gaped at one another; Mia's heart began pound hard and fast inside of her chest.  
“Wonder who that could be,” he squeaked out. She nibbled on her bottom lip.  
“You have that number, right?” she asked him in a near whisper; he nodded his head. “Okay—have your knife ready, too. Just in case.”  
Careful to not make so much noise on the soaking wet carpet, she ambled towards the door and set her hand on the doorknob. She peeked through the peephole: in the dim light, she could see the outline of a head of fuzzy, frizzy hair. She recognized that hair, touching and giving it a nice clip.  
“It's Jason, false alarm.” Lars let out a low whistle as she opened the door to greet him.  
“Hi! How have you been?” she greeted him.  
“Hey! I was wondering when you guys would get home—I was down in the Bay Area for Christmas but I just flew back up when your boss Sandra invited me to dinner for New Year's Eve. I came over here because I don't have your number but I wanted to know if you guys wanted to come along but the house was dark when I came over earlier.”  
“Oh!” She turned to Lars, who nodded his head in excitement.  
“We'd love to—you said New Year's Eve, right?”  
“Yeah. She said she wants Lars to be there, too. You know, like a New Year's party, and I guess also because she's got a little crush on him.”  
“Oooh, Lars, you little fox!” Mia took a step back to face him straight on, and the carpet made a squish noise underneath the sole of her shoe. Jason frowned at that.  
“What's going on here?”  
“Someone broke in and raided the fridge,” said Lars from the kitchen.  
“And left the refrigerator door open, too,” she added. Jason's mouth dropped open in shock.  
“Oh my God, really?”  
“Yeah, I was just about to ask Mia where's the mop.”  
“It's at the end of the hall, baby.”  
“Do you have something to write on and write with?” asked Jason.  
“Er, yes! Come with me—and be careful walking this way, too.” He stepped into the house and shut the front door behind him as she led him into the kitchen. The water pooled around the soles of their shoes as she opened a drawer, and fished out a notepad and a plain black pen, and handed both to him. He placed the paid on the counter top and wrote something down in a quick chicken scratch.  
“This is my number,” he told her before writing down his name underneath it; “and I think I know the answer to this, but I assume you've got his.”  
“Of course,” she admitted as he separated the piece of paper from the rings.  
“Call me if some more bad shit goes down here,” he told her as he handed her the paper, “I can't do some serious damage like—I don't know, Dave. But I can be of help if you need it, though.”  
“Thank you,” she said, folding up the paper and slipping it into the inside pocket of her purse.  
“And I have to confess, I'm getting a real bad vibe from this house,” he confessed.  
“You too?” Lars exclaimed as he returned up the hall with the mop in hand.

Once he had picked up the lake of water upon the floor, both Lars and Mia were exhausted and thus turned in early that evening without dinner, a first for the both of them, but the inside of the refrigerator was barren and neither of them felt like eating a take out pizza.  
He took the right side of the bed once again while she spooned him from behind on the left side. Even though she held the soft silky skin on his belly in her palms, she slept in fits. She kept thinking Wayne was going to show up at the house at any minute and find the two of them laying in bed together. She managed to fall asleep at around two thirty in the morning, but awoke at six o'clock to the soles of her feet feeling cold and the feel of Lars' stomach rumbling. She wiggled her fingers to tickle him. He never stirred as she nuzzled his neck and kissed him on the far side of his face, right next to his ear.  
“I feel someone's hungry,” she whispered. He groaned inside of his throat and his stomach grumbled, a low guttoral angry growl.  
They would have to resort to eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner up at Marcia and Sonia's house that next day, given Mia had overdrafted on her bank account and wondered if the money she had in her purse would suffice until her next paycheck. She kept her eyes wide open for Wayne's car on their way to the airport to pick up her car there in the parking lot. She watched Lars in her rear view mirror all the way back to the Bennetts' house and hoped that should he spring out without warning, that Wayne would just see him as a bystander. That night, upon laying down in bed, Lars tugged her arms towards his belly as he swelled full of three large helpings of tuna casserole and green beans with French onion soup on top. She caressed his soft gentle skin before holding his body once he turned off the light. She wanted to protect this body for another day, to hold him and love him and have the feel of him next to her keep her safe for a little while longer, past her alarm at four o'clock the next morning.  
But on the other hand, she was excited to be back at work at Smell the Magic early Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, given he vowed to spend the day with Kirk and Sonia while she and Marcia returned to two new days of work before the New Year's dinner party with Jason and Dave at Sandra's house down in Wilsonville. Marcia's words that Wayne would return around this time rang through her mind and she wanted it to be untrue. Perhaps she could get Lars to stay a while longer at Sandra's house.  
“And James and Ashley still haven't come home yet,” Lars observed as he and Mia climbed out of her car: she had dressed herself in a fitted black dress while he washed and brushed his hair after putting on an oversized black coat he had found in the closet. Kirk joked Lars should have put on a tie but he rebutted to it with a “maybe if I became drummer for Elvis Costello but not here.”  
While she washed up in the bathroom before dinner, Dave poked his head into the bathroom and it wasn't until Mia saw him in the reflection in the mirror before her when she recognized his fiery red waves and realized it wasn't Wayne.  
“Hi—oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you.”  
“What's up?” she asked him, rinsing off the strawberry smelling soap under the faucet.  
“I told Jason what happened the other night,” he told her in a low voice.  
“Okay.”  
“Just because—you know.”  
“Yeah.”  
“And—since it's New Year's Eve, I can see troubling brewing. I told him that when you two go back to the house, we'll post up the block to keep an eye on you both.”  
“What if something does happen?”  
“Come out of the house and we'll come and get you two.”  
“And then what?”  
“Play it by ear.”  
She sighed through her nose as she shut the faucet.  
“Okay.” She turned to the towel on the wall right as he ducked back out the hall.  
Sandra had lay out a buffet of a few meats (“—oh, chorizo—” Lars muttered under his breath as he picked up a spoonful), a batch of baked pasta, vegetables, and three kinds of garlic bread. Mia kept her hand on his knee as they congregated around the table with the extra chairs and the gray china plates; she must have said all of five words over the next three hours as Sandra took hold of most of the conversation there at the table. All she wanted was to feel Lars next to her a little while longer before the shit went down at the blue and white house. Lars, on the other hand, relished in every bit of the food and a dry martini courtesy of Kirk and Marcia.  
By the time dinner wrapped up and Marcia and Sonia helped clear the table, Mia checked the time on the top of the oven to find it was only nine o'clock. But if they were to remain safe, she would have to take a gamble and return to the house with Lars and work from there. It was her house after all.  
He entered the front door, and staggered into the living room, and thumped down on the couch with his pants unbuttoned.  
“Ah! Oof—that was what you call a gorgeous meal,” he told her as she kicked off her shoes and unhooked her dress.  
“What say you and I get a little more comfortable?” she suggested, peeling off the shoulder straps and he raised his eyebrows.  
“Ah, you wanna—you wanna—” He smirked at her.  
“I'll give you the nicest belly rub to usher in the new year, too,” she teased, dropping her dress to her feet to bear her bra and panties to him. He leaned forward and tugged off his coat, and left it there on the couch as he chased her into the hallway. She leaned her back against the wall as he pressed his hands on either side of her to give her a kiss full of tongue: she sensed the rough feel of sprouts of hair appearing on his face. He had only started when he jerked his head back.  
“Wait a minute. What if something happens? Like—Doorknob comes back again?”  
“Why, because it's New Year's?”  
“Only seems reasonable. Also Dave and Jason followed us home.”  
“Dave told me they would post up the block to keep an eye on us in case something does happen.”  
“Ah, well. Good to know.” He smirked at her again before lunging his tongue back into her mouth. He then took out his tongue again. “Also, I'm the one with the knife.”  
“You are indeed the one with the knife.” She winked at him.  
“Ahhh. Okay, come here—for your New Year's kiss.”  
She closed her eyes as he dropped his hands to her face: she ran her fingers through his long hair before sliding her hands down his back and towards his hips. She reached under his shirt to squeeze the lush skin over his hips and then she moved onto his belly, all stuffed full with a helping from each bit of food on display. She groaned inside of her throat at the feel of him touching her and his stubble brushing over her face.  
“—mmmm, the feeling is mutual, skat,” he whispered. A bright light shining from behind the shades in the living room window caught her attention and she jerked her head back.  
“What?” he breathed out, concerned. “What? What?”  
“Shit! That's him!”  
His face turned as white as a sheet.  
“That's him?”  
“Who else could it be?”  
“Oh, fuck. Fucking fuckity fuck fock fock FOCK! What do we do?”  
She clasped her hands to her face to keep herself from screaming, or from vomiting.  
“Tell you what,” she began, making it up as she went along: “I will pretend to be all sweet towards him, like if I'm seducing him and if he tries to like—I dunno, come after me—I'll get him with your pocket knife.”  
“And what should I do?”  
“Er—shit. There's not really a lot of places in this house to hide in, other than like the shower or the bedroom closet. All I can think of is hanging out outside.”  
“Outside? Mia, it might rain.”  
“I'm glad you brought your coat with you.”  
The light outside faded out to blackness and Lars swallowed a hard gulp of nervous air. His hand trembled as he reached into his jeans pocket for the pocket knife Dave had given him.  
“Alright,” he told her in a hushed voice. “But I will keep the window cracked so I know if everything is okay in here.”  
They rushed down the hall to the bedroom and the window next to the bed when he halted in place.  
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.”  
“What?” she demanded.  
“We should have a signal.”  
“A signal?”  
“Yeah. Like, if—I don't know—” His putting on his coat distracted him a bit, but he soon picked it up. “—if something goes horribly wrong in this house, you can make your way to the bedroom window and do—something so I can hustle around the side of the house to the front yard and grab Dave's attention and get us out of here.”  
“Okay, um—how about Napoleon?”  
“After the treat? Meh—seems too conspicuous.”  
“Okay, so preferably something that's just been made between the two of us—ooh! How 'bout 'touching tea'?”  
“Touching tea?”  
“Yeah, because I can wedge it in without it sounding obvious.”  
“Hmm—oh, so you could say something like 'stop touching tea' and it could perhaps pass of as 'stop touching me'! Yes! That will work. Okay, kiss me—”  
She lay a hand on his face to feel the hair coming in on his skin; her other hand lay upon his chest so she could feel the hammering inside of his chest.  
“—and rub my belly for good luck.”  
She lifted up his shirt to massage the soft smooth skin, the skin she wanted to protect so much.  
“Okay, baby, be careful out there,” she advised him. He slid open the window and lifted one leg over the sill, bowed his head under the edge of the pane, and before he could steady himself on the ground below and move his other leg out, he lost his balance and stumbled out into the darkness with a muffled “—oof!”  
But he was outside. Mia shut the window to about a half an inch and darted to the closet for her pajamas when she heard the door open. She slipped on her pajama bottoms and was about to unhook her bra when she saw his silhouette striding down the hall out of the corner of her eye. She turned to him as the straps of her bra slid down her shoulders.  
“Hi,” she greeted him.  
“Hello, Mia,” said Wayne in a flat tone of voice. “I've been looking for you.”


	60. Chapter 60

Mia could hear the bushes outside rustling as she crossed her arms over her chest to emphasize the skin on her breasts.  
Come on, Lars, stay quiet, she thought as she heard a stifled “—ow, ow, ow—ew—”  
“You've got some explaining to do,” Wayne told her.  
“Maybe I do,” she retorted, feeling her bra strap fall upon the side of her hand. She heard Lars mutter “—fock—too full—” right outside the window. His voice seemed so loud and carried into the room even though he spoke under his breath. Wayne on the other hand, folded his arms over his gargantuan chest: he appeared to have gotten heavier since the last time she saw him as his sweat shirt stretched taut against his body.  
“What are you trying to go at? Why is your dress on the living room?”  
“I was getting ready for you.”  
“Were you now?”  
“Yes. I was—in hiding—from you. Because I wanted to surprise you for New Year's.”  
“Oh, I see. You wanted to play around a bit. Little role play—okay. Two can play at that game. Can I ask why the window's open?”  
“It was stuffy in here. You know, fresh air.”  
The sound of a stick snapping apart outside the window caught both of their attention.  
“When suddenly, the wind picks up,” he said, lumbering towards the window when she lunged in front of him to stop him: he smelled as though he hadn't showered in a week.  
“No, no—I need the window open a little while longer. You know, to—” She dropped her bra from her chest to show him her breasts and he showed her an unsure smile.  
“I see—want me to—lay down?”  
“Behage,” she said almost without thinking.  
“Come again?”  
“Please.” She winced at the fact she almost gave Lars away. He lumbered to the bed and lay down on his back with his chest heaving, and she knew if she made a run for it to the front door, she could meet up with Dave and Jason down the block in no time. Lars also wore his tennis shoes, so they could run far away if the opportunity presented itself. The noises outside the window disappeared and she knew either he made his way to the other side of the house or he managed to keep himself quiet.  
Mia slunk to the bed to undo his jeans when he stopped her in her tracks. He pointed at the window at Lars' overnight bag resting on the floor underneath her purse.  
“Whose bag is that?”  
“Mine.”  
“Yours?”  
“Yes.”  
Clearing his throat, he sat upright to face her straight on.  
“I assume that coat in the other room is yours now, too.”  
“I—took a third job. As a seamstress.”  
“A seamstress? In as long as we have known each other, not one time have I seen you sew.”  
“I can learn.”  
“You can learn that? Right.”  
“Just lay back down, big boy.”  
She climbed onto his legs even though the stench emanating from his breath and from his armpits filled her nose and her mouth until it almost choked her. She held onto the button of his jeans and unfastened it to expose the sweaty rolls formed around his hips and over the waist of his underwear. But she kept her promise to Lars: she was going to do it and force her psychotic husband into submission so they could get away together.  
She thought about her thigh high boots, and climbed off of him, and headed to the closet to fetch them.  
“What are you looking for?” he asked her, breathing hard.  
“These.” She held the boots in both hand to show him.  
“Oh, wow.”  
“Yeah.”  
She set the boots down on the floor before stripping off her pajama bottoms and dropping them onto the floor. She slipped her feet into the shoes and stuck the leather onto her legs before zipping them up.  
“Custom made,” she told him, standing upright with her hands to her hips.  
“Alright. Come here, you little bitch—I'm hard as a rock and I need relief—”  
She climbed back onto the bed and straddled herself over his hips: it was nothing like Lars in that she nearly lay flat on top of him. But she managed to keep the leather on either side of him as she clawed at his sweat shirt to pull herself on top of him. The smell oozing out from his body was almost unbearable by the time she came face to face with him. She was about to lean into his face when a creak in the bed frame caught both of their attention.  
“That didn't sound good,” she whispered; she flashed back to when she and Lars sixty-nined right there in the same exact spot on the bed.  
“Sorry, I've been—stress eating a lot.”  
“Come on, come on—touch me. And keep touching me. Keep touching tea.”  
“Touching tea?”  
Some more rustling emerged from outside the window. Everything was going fine there, but she let it slip out of her mouth.  
“Touching me. Forgive me—I am a little tired. But I will gladly dance for you—”  
“Be a good girl and pour me some glitter.”  
She hesitated for a second. This man, this man whom she married, began to feel like a stranger, a fat smelly stranger who needed no ounce of protection from her. He gave her no comfort, but instead twisted her and damaged her. Something told her he knew about the gash on the back of her head the month before, and every muscle in her body retracted at the thought. The lips of her pussy remained closed, too, and even more so when she felt he could be filthy rich and she still wanted to find her way back to Lars.  
A light sound floated from down the hall, but on the other hand, she felt it came from the rain, which began to fall upon the bushes outside. She was about to peel off her panties when he coughed and his chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath.  
“Hurry up, girl, before my cock goes down again—”  
“I'm trying to go at it slow,” she pleaded.  
“Go faster! I want it! And I want it now you fucking whore!”  
She yanked off her panties and sat down on his firm sloppy dick. She scrunched her face at the sting of it against her. Her mind and her vagina both had set their places down on Lars, who had tangled up in the rain outside. All soaking wet and cold… she pictured herself putting a blanket around him before cuddling with him in the back of Dave's car and feeding him hot chicken and rice soup. She pictured herself following it up with a nice rub on his little belly before they made love there in the back seat.  
She tried to ride but it lacked the same flow as with him. The tip and the shaft ground against her soft tissues like a hot cattle prod yanked straight out of a fire. He, on the other hand, had a different opinion.  
“Oh—yes—yes, that's the spot right there! Yes, that's it! THAT'S IT!”  
He was interrupted by Mia being jerked off of him and off of the bed. She peered up at the flash of fiery red tendrils of hair over her head.  
“Dave!” she exclaimed, clambering onto her feet and pulling up her panties. He threw her the bra on the floor.  
“Come on, put your clothes on, and grab yours and Lars' things, and let's boogie the hell out of here—”  
“Lars?” Wayne demanded, scrambling into an upright position; while Mia threw her bra back onto her chest and her shoulders, Dave shot his hand out to stop him in place.  
“Get the hell away from her, you fat fuck!”  
“Hey, fuck you, man!”  
She hooked her bra and threw on the black shirt she wore to Smell the Magic followed by her pants: she almost lost her balance putting them on over her boots, but she managed to do it. While Dave shoved her husband back onto the bed with all of his strength, she scrambled to the window for her purse and the two overnight bags. It would be another series of nights over at the Bennetts' house as Dave punched him in the face.  
“You look like Fatty Arbuckle, you stupid cunt,” he growled.  
“Get off me!”  
Dave smacked him, hard, in the face once, twice, three times before he spoke another word.  
“Get this through your head, you piece of shit—I swear you come after her again like you did, you are DEAD!”  
“Get off me AND LET ME HAVE HER!”  
“That is not how you treat a lady, you mother fucker you—”  
Wayne shoved him off of him and Dave fell onto his back on the floor like a rag doll. Mia darted out of the room and into the hallway. She paused to wait up for Dave, who stumbled out of the room and lunged for the closet door. He threw it open and yanked out the mop right as Wayne lumbered towards him. Dave took a swing at his head and the shaft of the mop splintered upon impact.  
“Run for it!” he shouted. It was difficult because of the high heels and the weight from the three bags upon her body, but Mia sprinted to the front door and threw it open. She ran, blind, out into the rain to the truck parked at the curb. There was a light from the inside of the cab. And through the darkness, she made out the silhouette of Lars in the back seat.  
“Come on! Come on! Skynde sig! Skynde sig!”  
Mia dove into Lars' arms and he fell onto his back on the seat. Meanwhile, Jason stuck his head and arms out of the window.  
“Come on, Dave! Come on! Come on!”  
Dave slid over the hood of the truck before reaching the driver's side door. He scrambled into the cab. Shut the door behind him. Searched through the darkness for the keys. Mia heard them jingle as she climbed off of Lars' body: he panted as he slid over to the other seat.  
The truck roared to life and they sped away from the blue and white house.  
“Might have to stay with my boss for a bit,” said Mia, panting.  
“Yeah—unless James and Ashley get their asses back up here.” Dave let out a loud sigh as he tore around the corner. She slid the bags off of her shoulder and onto the floor between her and Lars. She then threw her arms around him and he held her close to his body.  
“God, that was insane,” she breathed out; in the dim light flowing in from the street and from the glow of the headlights, she watched him pull a leaf out from his hair.  
“Yeah, I'll say—I got stuck,” he began, his voice breaking, “my big butt got stuck between two branches while I was crawling out of the bushes, and I almost ripped my coat and stuck my hand in some black mud shit. And then I heard you give the signal and I split over to Dave and Jason as fast as I could. But what I want to know is—how the bloody hell did he get into the house so easily.”  
“I forgot to lock the door,” she confessed.  
“Lock your door next time,” Dave advised, taking a glimpse into the mirror.  
“Oh, no, don't do that—you'll only make him mad,” said Jason.  
“Yeah, the bastard will probably fuck up her doorknob, too,” added Lars.  
“God—thank you, Dave,” she pleaded.  
“Of course, babe. Totally fucked up my shoulder hitting him, though.” She watched him bend his arm before moving his elbow back to put his shoulder at ease. A girl friend of Lars is a girl friend of mine. Right?”  
“Absolutely. I almost feel bad, though,” Lars confessed to her.  
“Why's that?” she asked.  
“Because we had to take you from your house. I also didn't want to spend our last couple of days together like this, either.”  
“It's not safe, though, man,” Dave pointed out. “I say we go to Marcia and Sonia's house to check up on them and Kirk, and then we'll go ring up Sandra.”  
“Really hope he doesn't call the cops on us, Dave,” Jason fretted as the windshield wipers squeaked on.  
“He won't. He broke into two houses and forced Mia onto him. We've got more reasonable doubt than he does.”  
In the dim light, Mia turned to look at Lars, who sighed through his nose as he leaned back against the seat.  
“Am I evil? Yes, I am,” he muttered under his breath. They wound back to the Bennetts' house over the dark, rain soaked streets of Portland in total silence. Every so often, Mia glanced over at Lars, who stared out the truck window with his elbow resting upon the top of the door and his chin inside of his hand. About a block from the house, she reached over the seat to set a hand upon his knee; before reaching the house, she felt his fingers upon the backs of her knuckles.  
Soon they all piled back out to the rain and hurried up the walkway to the front door when Mia remembered the doorknob.  
“The gate!” she exclaimed, leading them to the side of the house. With the darkness over them and the rain falling into her eyes, she struggled to pry open the gate, but after jimmying the lock on the other side of the wood, she threw it open for the four of them and they rounded the side of the house to the kitchen door. Sonia was seated at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and her face lit up when she recognized their faces emerging from the darkness.  
“Kirk! Marcia!” she called out as they huddled in the warm kitchen for a second. “Oh, my God—what happened?”  
“It was just—just, just, just, just—” Mia could scarcely speak.  
“It was insane,” Lars filled in for her.  
“I'll tell you this,” Dave started, leaning his arm against the kitchen counter; Kirk and Marcia emerged from the hall with worried expressions upon their faces. The former had an acoustic guitar slung around his neck.  
“What's that?” Sonia followed along.  
“It's not safe to go back to that house. At least, not until his fat ass gets handed to him by someone or something other than me.”  
“It's not safe here, either,” Jason added.  
“Well, it—kind of is,” Marcia pointed out. “At least, you know—until we get the front door fixed. With him around now, I don't see that happening any time soon which means we have to take the gate out to the street.”  
“What's Sandra's number?” asked Kirk. “Couldn't Mia stay with her for a day or so?”  
“Yeah, she probably could,” answered Marcia, “not sure about Danielle, her other boss. But Sandra, for sure.”  
“Wait, what about Lars?” Sonia interrupted.  
“I go back home in a couple of days,” he told them.  
“Do you now?” Marcia raised her eyebrows at that.  
“Yeah. Driving back solo. It's alright—I have got lots of music with me. And I can think of a rhythm or two while I'm driving, too. Unless Jason wants to come along.”  
“Nah, man, I'm flying back.”  
“Damn it. Wait, what about you, Dave?”  
“I'm going back to L.A. soon.”  
“Damn it!”  
“But, meanwhile,” Sonia began, setting a hand on Mia's shoulder, “you can stay with us and Sandra for the next week or so, or until the—when's that show that Mom and Trent want to take you guys to?”  
“The seventeenth. Over the three day weekend.”  
“Okay, and hopefully—we can hope, anyways—the heat will have blown over by then.”  
“Alright. But what if it hasn't?”  
Sonia shook her head.  
“No idea. Unless Mr. Lars has a trick up his sleeve.”  
“Let's not get ahead of ourselves now,” he warned, waving his hands before him. “I just want to curl up with my darling here—” He put his arm around Mia's shoulder. “—in the guest room for the final moments of the year and usher in the new one.”  
“And watch cartoons?” she added.  
“And watch cartoons.”


	61. Chapter 61

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I know you want what's on my mind,  
> I know you like what's on my mind,  
> I know it eats you up inside,  
> I know you know, you know, you know.."  
> -"Sex Type Thing (Swing Type Version)", Stone Temple Pilots (moody and sensual, just like Lars himself)

Mia rolled over onto her back in the bed in Marcia and Sonia's guest bedroom. It was the Friday morning before Martin Luther King, Jr weekend, and the day she made the drive up to Seattle, by herself, to meet up with Mikayla, Trent, Mark, Jerry, Layne, and of course, Lars. He flew up to the city the day before and bunked up in the guest room at Olivia's house in anticipation of Mia's arrival after her shift at Curl Up and Dye. She climbed out of bed to wash her face and get dressed in her black blouse and matching trousers over her thigh high boots for the day. She combed her hair with her fingers once she put on a splash of perfume and her rain coat; she headed out of the kitchen door to the gate and then the street with a cup of coffee in one hand, her car keys in the other, and a cinnamon bagel in her mouth.  
The past couple of weeks had felt rather tense with the feeling looming over them that Wayne could perhaps come after her, Marcia, and Sonia again, but he never showed his face at the house again. But she still made a habit to peer into the rear view mirror every several seconds every time she drove from their house on Multnomah to Smell the Magic to make sure his car wasn't lurking behind her. By the time school started up again, Kirk returned to the Bay Area and Ashley flew up from James' house with twin stripes in the hair right above her temples: both stripes began dark at her roots but neon blue at the tips.  
“James told me I'd look good with a little hair dye,” she assured the three of them with a wink. She wanted to join Mia on the trip up to Seattle but she and Sonia couldn't miss a day in this next term at school.  
Therefore, by the day's end, Mia was left to her thoughts once she swept up the stray pieces of cut hair and sharpened the scissors for the next stylist. As she ambled to the front of the salon to sign herself out for the long weekend, she passed the nook on the left side of the room, the one where she fed Lars most of that pie and touched herself right in front of Trent. She wondered if anything like those two things were any more possible given the table had been taken out and put on the other side of the room.  
She hoped to find a new pair of shoes when she drove up to Seattle since she had to something other than the thigh high boots, which she had had with her since Dave and Lars broke her out of the house on New Year's Eve. She still remained in stunned disbelief that neither of them realized she and Wayne were married and that he played the role of the crazy man who broke the Bennetts' front door and a lamp in their living room.  
She set down the pen before ambling over to the other side of the room for her coat and her purse. Everything was packed in the back of her car, all she needed was to make the drive up there. Two and a half hours over the bridge and through the wilderness with nothing more than her thoughts? Perhaps she could try her hand at what Lars did and come up with a riff or a rhythm of some sort on the ride up.  
She tried making up a beat on the rim of the steering wheel but it was either that or pay attention to the road without flying head first into the guard rail. But on the other hand, the noise from the road filled her ears as she stared straight ahead over the pavement and at the trees clustered on either side of the highway. It seemed to twist and warp away from a continual wall of sound to a nuanced, down tuned riff. She went around a bend and the noise changed in tone, like a sludgy guitar riff that started up the neck and headed down.  
She stared up out the windshield at the menacing darkening sky and the first splotches of rain upon the sheet of plexiglas before her. The riff in her head grew harder and darker and richer in tone as the faint silhouette of Mount St. Helens lurked off in the distance to her right. She would have to relay it to Lars or to Jerry when she saw them that evening because she had very little way around a guitar or any instrument for that matter. But she could feel the music within her: she sensed it in her bones. She couldn't hear the words, but she knew the music to the song, the song that hadn't yet been written. Each car that passed her on the other side of the highway and shone their lights in through her windshield made her think of rhythm, like the rhythms from a set of drums. She had to share it with Lars. He had to know about it.  
Within time, the small clusters of lights from Puyallup passed by on the right side of the road, followed by the glimmering lights from Tacoma. The highway twisted around a bend and she entered the tight knit community of Lacey. She spotted the signs which pointed to the edge of the Puget Sound that was Olympia and the back road which led to the Olympic Peninsula and the islands.  
She focused on the dark freeway before her as the lights of Sea-Tac and Georgetown emerged from the blackness around her. Mia flexed the fingers on her right hand and then switched to her left as she spotted the next exit off for the Queen Anne neighborhood. She could taste Lars on her tongue again as she slowed down upon the off ramp and met up with the road taking her to Olivia's house. She thought about giving him the biggest hug as the road rose up with the hill and wound through the deserted neighborhood streets, lit by mere street lamps which flickered on with their orange lights. She soon came to that quaint little house facing Mount Rainier and the sunrise.  
She pulled up to the curb, and switched off the car, and reached in between her legs for her purse. Keeping her head bowed to protect her eyes from the cold rain, Mia padded up the walkway to the front step and knocked on the door panel. Brief silence, and then the door opened.  
His cheeks had grown a little bit rounder and fuller, and his shoulders and his chest both had broadened to fit up to the extra pounds on his body, but Lars never appeared more beautiful to her in that green and white Green River shirt underneath a black button down shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, dark colored denim, and of course, his Deep Purple pendant. His face lit up when he recognized her.  
“Hello, my darling!”  
“There's my baby!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him and closing the door behind them with the high heel of her right boot. He felt softer and warmer to the touch, especially when she dropped her hand to his deepening chest and his belly, which felt a little bit rounder than two weeks earlier. “—oh, my extra weight—”  
“Yeah, I've put on just a tiny, little bit more,” he confessed, giving himself a light pat as part of his greeting.  
“Just as cute and delicious as ever, though—” She put her arms around his waist before she planted her lips to his mouth. He beamed at her once he pulled back to look at her in the face.  
“Delicious? Is that what you called me?”  
“Delicious, yummy, silky, tasty, decadent, rico—it is all the similar thing, baby boy.” She peered about the front of the house while keeping one hand on his lower back. Aside from the rain on the roof, the house was quiet. “Are you here by yourself?”  
“I am,” he replied, tossing his hair back from his face. “I have been alone all day, actually. Like I got here last night and Olivia told me I was going to be solo here all day, or at least until either you or her showed up. And I was just about to help myself to some leftover macaroni and cheese in the fridge. I guess she is working rather late this evening because she called and said she wouldn't be home for another hour and a half or so. That was like twenty minutes ago.”  
“It is a three day weekend after all.”  
“Indeed it is.”  
She licked her lips as she eyed the middle of his body, and the bottom of his shirt and the waist of his jeans both hugging him and emphasizing the incoming curvature of his hips.  
“So—how much more?” she asked him in a light voice.  
“On me?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Let's see—when I left Portland on New Year's, I was at a total of nineteen pounds heavier, and in the past couple of weeks, I put on—about five? So I am getting up there, skat. I am beginning to tip the scale.”  
“It looks good on you. You're getting very sexy and it goes with your face so nicely.”  
“Just my face?”  
“And your body, too. Getting such a gorgeous body. Getting so beautiful in every way possible.”  
She put her arms around his waist again to feel his warmth and his softness.  
“Mind you, I haven't eaten in almost two hours,” he pointed out.  
“Better eat up that pasta, papacito,” she whispered, nearing his face again. She hung her lips close to his mouth when she noticed the clear, smooth skin all around his mouth and his chin. “You shaved.”  
“Yeah, it was—getting a little bit itchy. But I can grow a beard if you would like, though. You know—tickle you while I kiss you between the legs.” He winked on the word “tickle.”  
“It doesn't need to be a full beard—it can just be… I don't know, a little scruff. Like a little shadow. A little scruff in conjunction with your chubby little face and your hair I find to be very, very sensual. And one of those button down shirts with the top two buttons undone? Oh yes. Even more, in fact.”  
“Ah, so you want me to look like I just fucked you, don't you?”  
“Maybe.” She shrugged but then she returned to the low tone of voice. “Or maybe I want you to shut up and eat your pasta.”  
He stuck out the tip of his tongue and ran it along his upper lip followed by the edge of his two front upper teeth. He gazed into her eyes for a moment before taking her hand and leading her into the kitchen.  
“I should also add—the macaroni has little links mixed in with it,” he told her as she took a seat at the kitchen table. He reached into the refrigerator for a large Tupperware container with a red lid on top, and closed the door with his hip. “I can finally do that now!”  
“Close a door with your hip?”  
“Yeah! It's kind of hot, too.”  
He pried off the lid and retrieved a plate from the overhead cupboard. She watched him scoop out a large portion of the macaroni and cheese out of the container with a fork before sticking it into the microwave next to the refrigerator.  
“Would you like some for yourself?” he offered her.  
“Maybe a bite or two,” she confessed with a shrug.  
“Really?”  
“Yes.”  
“Did you just get off work?”  
“I did. Well, I wouldn't say 'just'. It was about two hours ago.”  
“You must be famished then.”  
“Not exactly.”  
“See, when you hugged me, you smelled like the spirit of a hair salon, so I kind of get it, but still.” His face stayed nice and full upon showing her a seductive little smile.  
“You trying to pull the same thing on me as I do with you?”  
“I don't see why not.”  
“It makes sense—we are in this together after all. But—I am good for a couple of bites. Is it homemade?”  
“The hell it is, with white cheddar, Gorgonzola, Gouda, and Havarti mixed in with the pasta and the links. Having it last night warmed my belly up so nicely—but it wasn't really the same not having you lay next to me, though. Not having you back there in the bedroom to rub my belly, and hold me and love me.”  
The microwave made a light ding! and Lars opened the door for his plate of pasta. He placed it on the table across from her before shutting the door; he then took his seat across from her. He blew over the hot food and the aroma of the sausage links and the Gorgonzola tickled her nose. He picked up his fork and dipped the tines into one side of it, and gave the bite another two blows.  
“Come on—I know you want more than that. I know you want so much more than that.”  
“I don't,” she assured him with a smile. He squinted his eyes at her as he held the fork out before his face, and then handed the fork to her.  
“Feed me then.”  
“Feed you?”  
“Feed me. Go on. I know you want to.”  
She licked her bottom lip before nibbling on it.  
“I don't know,” she confessed, never removing her smile from her face.  
“Mia, darling—it's seven thirty at night. I've been alone at this house since this morning, and I've gained over eleven kilograms and a tiny bit over three centimeters around my waist and my arms since November. Now shove this into my mouth.”  
“Lars—” She stuck out her right foot from underneath the table and he glanced down at the high heel jutting out from underneath her black trousers. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of them before returning to her.  
“Oh,” he mouthed.  
“Yes.” She leaned over the table to take a better whiff of the macaroni and cheese, and to loom right before his face. She held onto the end of the fork and slipped it out of his hand. “Now—as your mistress—eat up. And I will give you dessert.”  
He kept his eyes locked upon her as he bit down upon the fork and moved his head back in slow motion. She watched him for a moment before dipping the fork into the dish again to include a piece of link in with the macaroni, and then she held it before his face for another bite. He did the same thing over and over again until he cleaned his plate, and then she scraped the basin of the plate for the extra Gorgonzola and Havarti for herself.  
“Shall I have some more?” he asked her.  
“If you want.”  
“You know, there's something in the fridge for you.”  
“Is there now?”  
“Oh, yes. It's from me, too. It's in the door.”  
She stood to her feet and, her heels making low clonking sounds on the linoleum all the way, made her way to the refrigerator door. She peeked inside to spot a dark chocolate bar wrapped in silver foil and dark violet paper. She eagerly took it out to hold it before her face and he nodded his head.  
“That's the one,” he answered, beaming so big that his face never looked fuller and more radiant. She closed the door then she lunged for him right as he stood to his feet. She held his warm body and gave him a gentle kiss on the mouth, followed by one on the side of his neck. Using her free hand, she ran her fingers through his hair.  
“Oh, I want you,” she whispered, giving him another kiss on the neck. “I want you so much more than ever now.”  
“You have my body and my heart, my love,” he confessed in a husky voice.  
“Ooh! I should tell you—on the way up here, I came up with a—guitar riff of sorts,” she recalled, and his eyes twinkled.  
“Did you really?”  
“Yes! I don't think it's complete, though.”  
“That'll happen, darling. Like that happens to me all the time.”  
“I don't guitar, though.”  
“Damn it! Well, when Jerry comes by tomorrow morning, share it with him. He can more than likely help you with it. And—I feel your hand there on my ass.”  
“What else would it be?”


	62. Chapter 62

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Some call me Georgie Boy  
> Some call me Jesus  
> Some call me in Detroit  
> In my luxury  
> You broke my heart-call it sweet surrender  
> Broke my only fan-call it body language  
> You broke my only fan."  
> -"My Only Fan", Malfunkshun

Mia watched Lars, who stood on the other side of the guest room while getting dressed back into his black clothes, but he instead slipped on a black, pink, and purple Malfunkshun shirt in lieu of his Green River shirt. It was Saturday morning, mere hours before the show, and the rain continued to fall upon the roof in droves.  
“I like purple on you,” she told him, sitting upright in the bed with the sheet, the blanket, and the duvet covering her bare chest. He flicked his head back to move his bangs out from his eyes.  
“Do you now?”  
“I do. And I green on you, too. Probably more than I like black on you and you look utterly amazing in black. All three bring out those pretty green eyes.”  
He bowed his head and raised his eyebrows to give her a coy look. He then wagged a finger at her.  
“You know what we should do,” he started, nibbling on his bottom lip, “upon going to Astoria in a couple of months?”  
“What's that?”  
He ran his tongue out from the corner of his mouth before setting his hands on his hips which in turn pushed out his chest.  
“We should totally go commando.”  
“Go—?” She felt her face grow warm and then he started chuckling.  
“Lars!” she scoffed in a hushed voice.  
“What?” He shrugged, never removing the frisky grin from his face. “I think it'd be good for us. You know, just walking around having my nuts hanging around inside of my trousers and your coochie exposed by way of a skirt…”  
“LARS!” Her voice echoed over the walls of the guest room.  
“Yes?” he squeaked out, startled. They hung there in silence: the sole noise coming from the roof over their heads. Mia cleared her throat as she brought her knees closer to her chest.  
“Why not just don one piece of clothing—while we go commando?”  
He widened his eyes at her, never taking his hands off of his hips. And then, the side of his mouth lifted up to show her a sideways smirk.  
“…oh. Ohhhhh, I see, you just want me to walk around with no shirt on while not missing any more meals and then watch my belly flop around everywhere, don't you?”  
She shrugged. “I won't deny it.”  
“Aha! So you are worse than me. I knew it. Anyways, get dressed—Jerry's gonna be here soon.”  
“I should get dressed?” she asked, peeling the covers off of her body: she had worn nothing but her panties all night long. He licked his lips as he leaned over the foot of the bed. He rested his hands on the duvet so he could tilt his head forward and stare at her from beneath his bangs and his brow.  
“Yes,” he answered her in a husky voice, “we will have more fun later on, honey pie. Don't you fret it.” He winked at her before standing upright and with that, she rolled out of bed and stretched, extending her arms high over her head; he watched her with his hands still pressed to his hips. When she shot out her arms from her body to strike the cross shaped pose, he licked his lips at her again.  
“Like what you see here?” she asked him.  
“'Like' is an understatement,” he confessed, gazing down at her feet, followed by her lower legs, her knees, her thick thighs, her wide hips, her thick waist, and her bare breasts; he nibbled on his bottom lip at the sight of her nipples. “You trying to blue ball me and bust my nuts?”  
“Maybe. Or maybe I am just caring for myself how you're caring for yourself.”  
“Nah,” he said in a low voice. “Put on your clothes then.”  
“Soon.”  
“Come on.”  
“Not yet.”  
“Come on.”  
“Some day I will be able to rise my right leg up behind my head.”  
“And the day you do that is the day I slither my tongue upon your wet cunt with ease.”  
“You know—” She lay her forearms atop the crown of her head so she exposed her armpits to him. “—I've noticed your butt is taking a good deal of your weight. My baby has got back now.”  
“I've got back.”  
“You've got back, baby. I want to hold your ass all the way into town today.”  
“Be a little hard doing that while I'm sitting in the seat.”  
“No need. You can lay on your belly with the seat inclined and I can reach over and pinch your butt all the way into the west part of town.”  
The doorbell rang throughout the house.  
“There's Jerry!” he exclaimed. “I will go tend to him, you just—be my bad girl for a little while longer.” He flashed her another wink before stepping out to the hallway. She set her arms down and padded across the room to fetch her clothes. She would have to barefoot it for the time being before they left the house as she buttoned up her pants and slipped on a low cut black blouse.  
Jerry had seated himself on the couch with a shiny black acoustic guitar and matching black leather shoulder strap upon his lap. He wore a black knit cap, much like the ones Mia had back home, a black sweat shirt over dark denim jeans and large black leather Doc Marten boots upon his feet. Lars leaned back against the couch with his hands atop his head; the former lifted his head when he recognized Mia entering the room from the hall and his face lit up in response.  
“There she is! He was just telling me you invented a riff on the way up here.”  
“I kind of did,” she replied, putting her hands behind her back out of modesty. “It's—dark and heavy.”  
“Dark and heavy—so I'm not sure if you could pull it off on this guitar,” Lars pointed out.  
“How does it go?” asked Jerry as he pressed three of his fingers to the strings. “Do you remember?”  
“Er, it starts a little high up the neck and then you move your hand towards this part here—” She gestured to the head.  
“Go slowly, too?” he followed up.  
“Yes.”  
“Ah, so like a doom riff of sorts! Any chords? Know any chords?”  
“I don't, no,” she confessed; she felt a slight bit of shame that she knew not the first thing about playing guitar. “All I can say is I heard it in my head as I was driving up the highway—you know, like from the road noise.”  
“Interesting,” he noted.  
“Yeah, that's very interesting,” added Lars “—almost like—I want to say—what's known as 'shoegaze'. That continual 'wall of sound'.” He projected out the palms of his hands to mime a wall before him.  
“Doomy, sludgy, dark—I should relay it to Layne when I see him again tonight. Maybe Chris will like it, too.” He let go of the guitar neck and rubbed his right eye.  
“So you guys ready for the show today?” he asked them.  
“The hell we are,” replied Lars as he set his hands back atop his head; the hem of his shirt lifted up from his band of his jeans so she could see that slight sliver of chubby flesh on his waist.  
“Do we have like a schedule or something?” she wondered.  
“As a matter of fact, we do. It doesn't start for another couple of hours, but I have it right here—”  
Jerry reached into his jeans pocket for a folded sheet of white paper and unfurled it to read it aloud.  
“Let's see—courtesy of our and Olivia's friends over at The Rocket, Soundgarden and Green River are in the headlining spots, obviously. Before them are—in descending order—the Melvins, Malfunkshun, and L7. And then, let's see, we have Nirvana, Tad, March of Crimes—Ben's band—and Screaming Trees—that's Mark's band—in the afternoon. We also have a whole mess of others—Skin Yard, The U-Men, Lunachicks, Babes in Toyland, Gas Huffer, Coffin Break, Cat Butt, The Allies, Visible Targets, Red Dress, Room Nine, Alice N' Chains—that's Layne's band—The Accused, The Cowboys, and The Fastbacks.”  
“Cat Butt!” exclaimed Lars.  
“I'd like to have a red dress, too,” added Mia with a wink. “Alice N' Chains, it's called?”  
“Yeah. Although, he and I have been talking about my joining in on guitar—something about their guitarist wanting to form a band of his own or something like that. Anyways, that's the gigs for today. All downtown under a series of tents away from the rain, even though it'll probably stop by around one and then start up again like four more times over the afternoon. Doesn't start for a couple of hours so—and I think I know the answer to this, too—you two kids can get a bite to eat or two before we go.”  
“Ooh, yes please—” Lars patted his belly and his knees before climbing up from the couch, and Mia giggled at him.

Soon enough, Mark, Trent, and Layne showed up to the house in the truck, all three dressed in slick black coats and knee high black rain boots; Trent had pulled a hood over his head so as to emphasize the stark contrast of his dark eyebrows and beady dark eyes against his pale white skin. Layne wore the same baseball cap as the night in the California back woods, while Mark wore a black hat with a flat wide brim to protect his eyes from the rain. Jerry slung his guitar case over his back once Lars and Mia followed him out the door to the drenched front lawn and the street. At some point, Mark had found a camper shell of a slight different color compared to the rest of the truck, and she knew the three of them would feel safe in the back if the cab lacked any more room.  
“Hey, you two!” Mark greeted them with a smile. “You ready to rock?”  
“Rock n' roll, my good man,” Lars declared over the monotony of the rain all around them.  
“Alright, who's sitting where?” asked Jerry, lifting the hatch on the camper shell to lay his guitar inside of the bed with the pair of small amplifiers.  
“Yeah, one of us is gonna have to sit on someone else's lap 'cause there's only five seats in there,” Trent pointed out.  
“I'll do it,” Lars volunteered, bowing his head under his hood.  
“You just wanna sit on her lap,” Jerry scoffed, closing the hatch.  
“To be fair, it's not often he does, though,” Mia joked and the six of them burst out laughing. But with that, Mark rounded the front of the truck to the driver's side and climbed into the seat; Trent took the passenger's side, while Layne and Jerry took the back. Mia slid into the seat behind Trent and then she gazed up at Lars, who lingered in the doorway next to her.  
“Come on, baby—come on in,” she coaxed him, patting on the tops of her thighs. He yanked his hood off of his head and his bangs stuck up every which way so the rain began to soak him a bit. Careful not to step on her toes, he eased into the back seat of the truck. She turned her head so she wouldn't get a mouthful of hair. He seated himself upon her lap: his extra weight pushed down on her like a heavy sack of potatoes. He bowed his head even though he had a full three inches of clearance above the crown of his head. She reached out to the right without looking to try and close the door behind them.  
“Lean back,” she encouraged him as she put her arms around his thick waist.  
“We're not going very far, anyways,” Mark assured them as he fired up the truck, “we're basically going past the Space Needle, down the Viaduct, and then we turn right.”  
The rain died down to a light spritz falling from the overcast sky, but he kept the windshield wipers switched on as they passed the tiny cozy houses and the Space Needle, the tall white beamed pointed monolith looming strong and high against the gray. Mark turned the truck onto the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a double decker freeway which bypassed the heart of downtown, including Pike Place Market, and the edge of the gray waters of Elliott Bay; and at one point, the viaduct came to an end in the neighborhood of Belltown, a funky commune of low houses, buttoned down apartment complexes with dark roofs, Mama's Mexican Kitchen, Shorty's, and a handful of art shops that didn't look to be open.  
“Hang on, Lars,” Mark called into the back seat, and he leaned against Mia's body; Layne and Jerry braced themselves to catch them, while Trent clung onto the safety bar over the door as the truck lumbered around the right corner. She felt his thighs slide off of her but she clung onto him as if she was going to lose him as they straightened out for the short distance over the bridge and Harbor Island until they reached the very heart and soul of West Seattle: the first stragglers of a larger crowd appeared upon the first stretch of green grass after several more low buildings.  
“You guys sure know how to party even in the rain,” Mia remarked.  
“Rain or shine, baby girl,” Mark told her, “Seattle knows how to make a shindig happen. And there's Kurt and Krist! Probably on their way to set up—”  
The mist dissipated once the truck pulled up to the curb, where Kurt and Krist shared an umbrella under a row of oak trees. The latter stuck his hand out to test the rain as Mark and Trent climbed out of the front seats to greet them. Layne opened the rear door and he climbed out first, followed by Jerry, and then Lars crawled off of Mia. She groaned a bit before she clambered out of the left side of the truck and into the crisp late morning air: the mist had waned off to where the sun could break through the clouds and cast pale light upon the eight of them.  
“Oh, hey, I remember you now,” Kurt greeted her with a warm smile. “The little Puerto Rican girl from Portland hanging with Lars.”  
“Yeah, I remember you, too!” Krist joined in with a boastful tone.  
“That's me.” She put her arm around Lars' lower back and placed a hand on his hip when a guy with long blond hair and a large beaklike nose strode by at brisk pace with a slight sneer on his face.  
“Portland!” He sounded scorn.  
“Yes,” she replied, setting her hand on her hip in indignation. He tossed his hair back with a loud “Ha! Outsiders…” before walking away to the tents on the other side of the grass.  
“What was that all about?” asked Lars.  
“Oh, that's Mark Arm,” said Jerry. “Lead man of Green River. He's… kind of an ass. But we all love him, anyway.”  
“He's kind of like the big brother you'd take a bullet for,” added Kurt, “but—on the other hand, you'd be the one firing the gun at him.”  
“So—you all wanna meet up here at the edge of the golf course?” Trent suggested as Jerry lugged the amplifiers out of the bed of the truck.  
“I've gotta lock up this bad boy, though,” said Mark, fumbling with his keys.  
“Yeah, let's do that,” Mia agreed, holding Lars closer to her body. Once the truck had been locked up tight, and Mark and Layne rushed towards the tents at a brisk pace, and both men carried one of the amplifiers in their hand, Trent led Mia and Lars into Sub Pop's very own music fest. She had brought money with her so the three of them could have a cup of espresso before congregating at the back of the crowd at the dimly lit March of Crimes show down by the river side. Ben stood strong and high in the shadow of the Space Needle in a gray rain coat and with a black electric guitar slung over his shoulder. He sang in a rough, rather off key voice but Lars watched him in awe with his eyebrows raised.  
“He sounds like James!” he declared.  
“OW!” Ben shouted into the microphone; his guitar string had snapped and stripped right over his hand. He clutched his hand in agony and stood there for a moment before turning to the crowd again.  
“It's alright, we didn't have very many songs anyway,” he assured the crowd, waving at everyone and a few people laughed. The three of them witnessed The Fastbacks, then The U-Men, then Babes in Toyland, and then Skin Yard: the latter had a slow but heavy song which they called “The Birds” and included a saxophone in the first part. Lars took Mia by the hand and held her close to dance with her. Trent stood back to watch them, and soon other people followed in his suit. His hand caressed her lower back as the swirling drums, the loud distorted guitars, and the singer's—who coincidentally also went by Ben—crooning into the microphone guided them in sort of a Seattle scene ballroom dance. She kept her hand upon his side but at one point, moved it to the front of his belly to feel him.  
“I've memorized every hole, darling,” he muttered into her ear, following the first line of the second verse.  
“In a rather small room?” she retorted, thinking about the guest room at Olivia's house.  
“Of course.” He bowed his head at the feel of her hand there on him.  
Soon they saw Mark in action with his band Screaming Trees, and then Tad, and then finally Nirvana, the latter of which the three of them stood at the front of the crowd for.  
Chad took his seat behind the drum kit while Krist stood tall upon the short stage with a shabby gray bass in hand. Kurt had stripped off his rain coat and put on a fuzzy sweater instead. He took a large drink from a white china tea cup which rested upon the top of a speaker before heading to the center stage for his guitar. His blue eyes twinkled at the sight of Lars, Mia, and Trent huddled before him.  
“This first song,” he began into the microphone, “is about a girl.”  
Lars raised his eyebrows before taking a glimpse at Mia, who showed him a warm inviting smile.  
His voice carried a hard grit to it, as if he had just woken up an hour before the gig; his voice also quivered and shook, as if it was recent when he learned how to sing and carry his voice, and yet the two of them found themselves mesmerized by him. He played his guitar in the opposite direction, the left handed direction, so that the chords and the strings were upside down. Strands of his blond hair fell into his face as he sang “I do—”  
They played for a mere twenty minutes, but it was more than worth it by the time they trekked to the next tent over to see the four women of L7 and their raucous, raunchy punk rock that roared up against the incoming howling winds from the storm overhead.  
Lars and Mia both raised their arms to clap along during the song “Shove”, meanwhile Trent tried to get some of the crowd to mosh but most of everyone either carried a glass of beer or a cup of coffee in hand so it never happened. The guitarist Jennifer chucked a bright red pick into the crowd and Mia crouched down onto the grass to catch it in the palm of her hand.  
“Good catch!” she called out from the stage. Mia held it up to her face and Lars threw his arms around her.  
“Oh my God—I absolutely LOVED them!” she squealed.  
“Told you you'd like them!” Trent exclaimed.  
Within mere minutes came the trio of Malfunkshun, all of them bearing white face make up in the vein of the men of Kiss. The front man played a bright purple bass with a narrow body and a high neck, and he sang in a gritty voice, much like Kurt. But his voice struck Mia as more childlike and more playful: she pictured him singing a ballad at some point in his life. At one point, he tossed his blond hair back from his face and greeted them all with a grin.  
“And this next one goes out to all you people! All you people who showed up tonight!”  
Mia peered behind them to see the two men standing at the very back of the small crowd.  
“I'm'a tell you all to love with yo' heart and not yo' hands, mother fuckah!”  
“Yeah, but sometimes it's better to love with your hands, though,” Lars joked into her ear and she giggled in response. At the end of their set, the two young men up front stood before their amplifiers for an end curtain of feedback.  
When the Melvins joined the stage, and Trent kept his proximity to them to protect them from the gathering crowd, Mia had a thought cross her mind, one similar to that of the one which she thought when she lurked behind Lars' drum kit at the Rose Quarter. She didn't want any of it to end, not that long weekend, not the whole gig, not the time with Trent, Mark, Layne, and Jerry, and especially not the time with Lars. She wanted to keep there next to him with the Melvins playing before them, with Jennifer's pick in her pocket, with her arm over his lower back to feel him, with her hand tucked inside of his right back pocket to feel the thickening flesh on his butt, forever. Another thought soon followed up that one when Soundgarden finished out the night, and that was her hope she, Sandra, and Marcia could win the baking competition in March, and the money could go to the shop down in Eureka, but also one here in Seattle.  
She wanted to be able to come to this city whenever she wanted with the boy she loved.


	63. Chapter 63

The time on another person’s watch showed eleven thirty at night by the time Trent guided Lars and Mia back to the spot by the golf course where Mark had parked his truck, the same spot where they all vowed to meet back up with Kurt and Krist again. Trent had pulled his hood over his head to protect himself from the pouring rain while he put his arms around either one of them to guide them through the dim light cast upon the area from the downtown area. Mia could hardly remove Chris' searing wail out from her mind. His voice was too big for a single room: she swore the whole city of Seattle heard that man sing his heart out.  
Soon the grass turned into sidewalk covered in shallow puddles and Trent stopped them in place. In the dim light, Mia watched him adjust the lapels on his coat and the edges of his hood to better protect his face from the rain.  
“Are you guys hungry?” he asked them.  
Lars snickered through his nose from underneath the hood of his coat.  
“You just had to ask,” Mia teased him. “But I could use a bite to eat, though.”  
“Alright. I hope Mark, Kurt, and Krist gets their asses over here 'cause I think the rain's going to get worse before it clears up.”  
“So you and Mike broke up?” was all she could think of next.  
“Yeah—might have to do with the fact there's twenty-five years between us, or it might be something else, I don't know. I don't even fully remember what we broke up over. But she gave me a reason and wanted control—and I was just an innocent guy by the time she showed up, too.”  
Lars huddled next to Mia right there on the dark sidewalk.  
“Are you cold?” she asked him.  
“Ehhh, kind of—I just want to be close.”  
She put her arm around him; she could feel the rain water collected on the fabric of his shoulders and on the side of his right arm. Trent, meanwhile, shook his head about underneath his hood.  
“I'm starting to get a little peckish myself,” he confessed, tugging at his lapels again. He turned his head to the left.  
“Here comes big daddy Mark,” he announced; Lars and Mia peered down the sidewalk at Mark striding at a brisk clip with the amplifier in one hand. The dim light from the city shone upon his reddish hair to give it an eerie amber glow as he approached closer to them.  
“Hey, ya'll,” he greeted them; the metal on metal tinkling sound of keys jingling caught their ear. “Jerry's—” His silhouette waved to the park and the golf course behind them. “—over there somewhere. He's coming and should be with us in like five seconds.”  
He rounded the tailgate of the truck to the driver's side. There was more jingling of the keys, followed by a soft click when the truck unlocked.  
“What about Layne?” asked Trent as Mark returned to the tailgate to put the amplifier inside of the bed.  
“I have no idea, man. I didn't see him. But until Jer shows up, let's get the hell out of this rain.”  
He yanked open the driver's side door then climbed inside to the dry and cool cab using the light from the ceiling overhead. Trent took the front passenger's side, while Lars and Mia took their seats in the back. They pulled the hoods off from their heads; in the dim light, Mia watched Lars run his fingers through the feathery dry hair on the crown of his head and then brush his bangs over to the side.  
“So all three of us are hungry,” Trent started.  
“Okay, um—I think Mama's is open right now,” Mark suggested, “I think, anyways. It is a bar after all. Unless Jerry gets his ass over here—”  
Lars slid across the seat to hunker down closer to Mia; the smell of marijuana and alcohol lingered upon his hair but he did not reek of it. If anything, the combined smell made her even hungrier. She put her arm around him again in the case of Layne and Jerry sliding into the backseat again. The four of them were silent, the sole sound being the soft patter of the rain on the roof. Mia flashed back on New Year's Eve two weeks before, when Dave broke her out of the house; she recalled the thought she had had about huddling down with Lars and something warm in his lap. It was going to happen for real by the time they heard a loud knock on the window of the camper shell behind their heads.  
“There he is,” said Mark; Trent pushed open his door so Jerry had bit of a light to open the back of the camper shell to set his guitar case and the other amplifier in the bed. When he shut the lid, Mark set his hand on the key over the ignition, and the passenger door behind him swung open, and Jerry climbed into the seat next to Lars.  
“Where's Layne?” asked Trent as he shut his door which in turn engulfed the cab of the truck in darkness.  
“He's—hitching a ride back to our place with—Nick, his guitarist. And Kurt and Krist couldn't find this side of the grass so they just boogied back to Aberdeen about five minutes ago.”  
“They couldn't find this side of the grass?” Mark repeated.  
“Yeah, something about their lights burning out or… something like that. But anyways, Layne told me to go ahead and catch up with you guys.”  
“Okay—” And with that, Mark fired up the truck and they steered away from the curb, and doubled back towards the bridge and Belltown.  
Mama's Mexican Kitchen was a dual room restaurant, brightly lit by several lights suspended from the ceiling which in turn shone upon the bright yellow paint job all around the five of them and everyone else in there; Lars shielded his eyes with the back of his head upon walking in through the squeaky wooden door. A shabby bar with a small well and a tiny display of bottled drinks and a few varieties of grenadine stood on one side of the room. Mark, Trent, and Jerry took the first three spindly chairs with comfortable black leather seats at the middle of the bar while Lars and Mia took the two at the far end in between two other young men.  
“Do you have money?” she asked him over the low chatter in the room.  
“I do, yeah. Why—” He showed her a smirk. “—you want me to spoil you?”  
“Nah. I'd rather get something for the two of us and then feed it right into your face.”  
He nibbled on his bottom lip by the time the bartender approached him; both of them asked for margaritas and she asked for extra lemon and no salt; they also both asked for a platter of tacos and some Spanish rice and refried beans.  
The two people behind them talked about furniture of some sort. Nothing interesting, that is until the man on the right spoke about “busting up an old, moist chiffarobe with a hatchet” which in turn brought Lars' eyebrows to rise high behind his bangs. He leaned over to her face with a blank expression. The other man talked about the same moist chiffarobe in question.  
“I'd like to bust up your chiffarobe,” he muttered into her ear.  
“Shhh!” she hissed, chuckling as she stuffed her left hand into his face; his cheek bones turned as red as the cherry tomatoes in the pico de gallo across the bar from them. The bartender returned with the frosted glasses of margaritas, both of which carried that smell of tequila that she knew all too well combined with citrus: Mia ran her finger along the rim to pick up some of the chunky grains of salt. Lars stirred his drink with the little black straw when two women on the other side of the room starting chanting “Push It” by Salt N Pepa.  
“I'd like to push it real good, too—” he confessed, picking up the glass at the base.  
“God, you're horny right now,” she scoffed as he took a sip. He smacked his lips before turning to her.  
“It is nearly midnight, I'm dying for tacos and rice, and I'm drinking a margarita, what are you expecting, darling?”  
“Maybe when we get back to Olivia's house,” she suggested.  
“Come on, darling, live a little! It's the eighties, we are in the very heart and soul of Seattle, and it's not like anyone's going to hear us, be it my cheese or the knife upon your steak.”  
“Steak?”  
“Steak.”  
A brief silence fell over them, the sole pocket of silence in the whole busy bustling restaurant. And then Mia realized what he was on about.  
“Lars!”  
He shrugged his shoulders and cracked her a big silly grin. Right then, a black haired waitress approached them from Mia's left with a large platter of six tacos, each of which consisted of hard golden shells lined with fresh guacamole, crisp lettuce, hot ground beef, and fresh grated queso blanco; on the side of the platter stood a small tin dish of fresh pico de gallo accompanied with another ceramic dish containing sour cream. She returned again with two small plates of refried beans and steamy Spanish rice, and a pair of forks. They both thanked her before facing straight on into their food.  
“Eat up,” she whispered into his ear so he could hear over the chatter around them. He turned to her with a glimmer in his eye as he reached for his first taco.  
“You wanna—?” He nodded at the taco in his hand; she peered around to make sure no one was watching.  
“Gladly, baby,” she told him, picking up the taco by the top of the shell. She held it up to his mouth when he raised a finger.  
“Sour cream, behage,” he commanded in a soft voice; she picked up her fork and dipped it into the dish of sour cream. She spread the dollop over the top of the ground beef and cheese, and then held it at an angle up to his mouth. He bit down on the shell, which made a sharp crunch as he took a large bite so he took in a little bit of everything inside of the taco. He pulled his head back to digest it and his eyes widened to resemble marbles.  
“Holy deep throated fucking HELL that's incredible!” he declared, bringing a hand to his mouth.  
“Is it?” Her face lit up and he nodded, eager to eat more. He took the taco out from her hand and began wolfing it down himself so she could take one for herself. Everything about the tacos were fresh and crisp, while the ground beef on the inside had the right amount of black pepper, coriander, and cumin. Mia took a whiff of cilantro from the pico de gallo as she took a bite of that.  
Upon eating his second taco, Lars slumped his shoulders and tilted his head back as he ate up another big bite. He swallowed before taking another drink of margarita.  
“I can really start to feel myself getting a pot,” he stated, setting a hand upon his belly.  
“No, no—you've got a ways to go,” she assured him, taking another bite of pico de gallo. “As I have said time and time again—you are not fat. And even if you were, you'd be very sexy.”  
He showed her a smirk before putting the last bit of taco shell into his mouth. He rested his chin in his hand right as the two men behind him stood up out of their seats and headed out to the darkness.  
“You know, Mia—darling,” he began after swallowing, “one of these days—one of these days, when you and I are together again like this—I am gonna be wearing a button down shirt and when I stuff myself silly—”  
“You'll pop a button?”  
“Yes! And if James is sitting there with us, I'll try and make it so he catches it in his mouth.”  
“In his teeth, specifically?” she added.  
“Yes!” he declared in a voice so loud that a few people behind them fell in abrupt silence in response. His cheek bones turned bright pink and he brought a hand to his mouth.  
“Having fun over there?” Jerry called out from the other side of the bar.  
“Indeed we are!” Mia replied as she handed the fork of pico de gallo to Lars so she could eat another taco. She kept her eye on him as he ate the rest of what was left in that dish; as he ate his last taco, he kept his eyes locked upon her with each and every bite. While drinking his margarita, he must have looked at the bar a total of three times, all three of them as he reached for his glass. He kept his eyelids hooded and heavy with each and every bite and crunch of the taco shell, and swallowing down a bite of rice and beans. By the time he scraped up the final bite of refried beans from his plate and set down the fork on the inside, and then wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, he placed one hand on the side of his face and the other on his belly.  
“You two baby dolls ready to go over here?” Mark asked Mia as he neared them from the other end of the bar.  
“Just about,” she assured him, taking one final sip of margarita, “just waiting for the bill.” Once he returned to his seat, she returned to Lars with a hand upon his thigh.  
“What'cha thinking about, baby?” she asked him in a gentle voice.  
“Thinking about—if you're up for it, anyways—making this one back at the house so soft and so voluptuous that the both of us will turn into complete jelly when the morning comes.”  
“I am up for it, yes,” she confessed to him, leaning into his face and smelling the spices and the tequila on his breath. It was akin to the first time he had her Puerto Rican donuts.  
“God—I can't wait to feel the grass around us when we're in Astoria,” he whispered to her.  
“Around the grass, underneath the trees, and feeling the winds through our hair,” she elaborated, “while I feed you strawberries—we can roll around in the bushes and touch each others' tummies.”  
“Strawberries and pandekager,” he added.  
“Strawberries, pandekager, and dulce de leche.”  
“I like you, Mia Panadera.”  
“I like you, too, Lars Ulrich.”  
She leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth, a soft sweet brush of the lips. She did not want to leave this behind, not this experience, and not this feeling, especially when she and him split the bill between the two of them and followed Mark, Jerry, and Trent back out to the street.


	64. Chapter 64

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I will devour you,  
> take all the pain away,  
> I cannot stay my hand  
> from reaching out so that I can  
> empower you  
> for all eternity.  
> It seems to ease my mind  
> to know that you've brought  
> meaning to my life.."  
> -"Devour", Disturbed

The first touch across Lars' full stomach was enough to send shivers over his skin: she could see the goose pimples covering his bare chest and down his arms. He closed his eyes as he let out a broken breath through his mouth. Mia lay three finger tips upon the soft skin on the side of his neck before giving him a kiss on his soft red lips. Her other hand glided down his side to his hip.  
“I don't ever want to stop tasting you,” she whispered into his face before giving him another kiss and then running her tongue up the soft skin on his cheek.  
“Let me—” His breathing grew harder and harder with each lick upon his face. She flashed him a grin.  
“What's that?”  
“Let me just—say—” His chest heaved as he leaned back towards the head of the bed. He caught himself once he planted his hands on the bed sheet. His legs spread out across the bed from underneath her. A soft moan left his parted lips as she ran her tongue along the side of his neck; a few more came out of his throat when she made kisses down his chest towards the higher part of his belly.  
“Do—Do you ever—mmmmmm—hmmm—mmmmm. Do you—ooh—ever get that real fluttery feeling inside of your—oof, inside of your stomach when you know things are going to get real—just utterly torrid between the two of us?”  
“In your stomach?” She lay a hand on his waist. He swallowed.  
“Yes—it's like a—a tugging feeling. Right in the pit.”  
“I do know what you are talking about. And it all started with a little rub. You sexy, full figured little boy—all of this meat on your bones—”  
She pressed her lips right in the middle of his belly followed by another one upon his belly button. He had grown so lush and tender, as smooth as the butter cream on a birthday cake; he reclined back on his elbows and then reached up to rub his eye with the tips of his fingers. He shifted his weight underneath her before laying all the way onto his back.  
“Take me,” he pleaded in a hoarse voice. She raised her head to look at him; then she crawled up towards his face.  
“Take me, skat—” he repeated, his chest still heaving, “—take me. I am yours.”  
“And I want you to take me, chico hermoso.” She opened her mouth again and dropped down, this time onto his left nipple. He let out a light squeak as the feel of her tongue there tickled him so much. Her fingers caressed with such a light touch down his chest that he gasped and relaxed every inch of his body. She lifted herself off of him to look into his face, at those pink cheek bones, that mouth gaping wide open and his tongue hanging out of one corner, and his eyes snapped shut: his bangs sprawled up above his brow and he rolled his head over to one side. She beamed at the sight of him and then leaned in to kiss him on the neck again. Another soft squeak left his mouth upon the feel of her lips. She reached down to his left hip for a light squeeze and he gasped: his eyes popped open in response. And then he closed them as hastily as he opened them.  
“Come on, beautiful,” she whispered, “let's snuggle.”  
“Gladly—darling—” Both words rode on a voice so light that he scarcely moved his lips. She lay down on the bed to the left of him and, once she switched off the lamp next to the bed, she rolled over onto her side to touch his body a bit more. His left hand rested upon her hip; but she fell asleep with her hand on his belly and woke up the next morning still in the same position.  
Since Mia needed better shoes than her thigh high boots, they spent the whole day walking through the heart of Seattle and she bought herself a pair of black Chuck Taylor high tops; Lars got himself a pair of red ones with bright green laces.  
“I should tell you,” he started as they left the shoe shop.  
“Yes?”  
“Jerry called this morning—he demonstrated the riff on his electric guitar while backstage at the shows yesterday.”  
“And?”  
“He thinks he might have something. He told me he'll share it with Layne when he gets the chance.”  
Mia clapped her hands out of excitement. He told her he wanted her to get a tattoo for herself, as a momento of her trip to Seattle and her time with him and the rest of the scene, but she wanted to have enough money to get herself home; however, she vowed next time. Within time, they returned back to Olivia's house in time for another round of homemade dinner and finishing out the evening and the long weekend by falling asleep on the couch watching Looney Tunes.  
Mia awoke the next morning to load up her car with her luggage and the boots. She slipped Jennifer's pick into the inside pocket of her purse so to keep it in a safe place. She then gave Olivia a big hug good bye at the door, but before leaving, Lars put his arm around her lower back to tug her closer to him. His lips entwined with hers and the tip of his tongue caressed the edges of her teeth. She rested a hand on his chest and, once he let go of her mouth, she slid it down to his belly one last time. He gazed into her eyes with the softest, most loving expression on his face.  
“Call me when you get home,” he whispered into her face.  
“Of course,” she replied and they gave one another one more kiss before she departed the house and climbed into her car. Before starting up her engine, she peered out the window at Olivia blowing her a kiss and Lars rubbing his belly with both hands and mouthing “I have love in my tummy” again to her. She blew both of them kisses and fired up the car, and drove out of Queen Anne. She passed through Georgetown and the exit which led down to the little shop on the corner, the same place she had bought that dainty red lace. She had entirely forgotten about that place.  
“I miss my thick boy already,” she said aloud upon passing by the offramp. Mia left Seattle within mere minutes: the mass that was Mount Rainier menaced at her from underneath a veil of mist and thin clouds. He told her to call him when she returned home. She sighed through her nose as she kept that thought implanted in the heart of her mind.  
She returned to the Portland within two hours, and to the blue and white house in fifteen minutes. The driveway stood vacant; she sighed in relief. She didn't want to have to deal with Wayne again, anyway. Not after New Year's Eve.  
She pulled up to her spot near the front step and switched off the engine. She rubbed her eyes before reaching down for her purse. She would grab her things in a bit, but first she needed to step inside and relax inside of her house.  
She unlocked the front door and entered the foyer to a cool still feeling hanging down from the ceiling. Lars' words about how the house gave him a weird vibe returned to her mind as she stepped into the kitchen. She licked her lips and felt the parched sensation in the back of her throat; she opened the refrigerator door to find the whole interior was left barren. Wayne had never replaced any of the food in there, not even after two weeks. And he told her he was working again!  
She shut the door and turned to the pantry. Nothing. The shelves were barren except for the box of baking soda at the back of the third shelf. He never filled the refrigerator and he took everything out of the pantry. All of her plantains, all of her fresh fruit, all of her cans of beans and corn, all of it, gone.  
“You—” she stammered, feeling her throat close. “You—You witless dish cloth—”  
She had twenty dollars in her wallet, not enough to fill up the refrigerator.  
Maybe he found out she overdrafted on her bank account and this was paying it back to her, like a notion of “serve you right.”  
Up until this point, Mia had put up with Wayne and his horrid mood because she had hope they could pull through and emerge on the other side as a whole team. But with her wondering if he was the right one for her from his actions towards her and then Lars' intervention, it came as no surprise that she stood there in the kitchen floor with her hands balled into fists. However, she didn't feel like punching anything.  
“I'm—such a—fucking—fool—” she stammered, unclenching her fists and clasping her hands to her face. Tears started to fall from behind her eyelids. She gasped, which led to whimpers, which in turn led to sobs. She wiped away her tears with the edge of her index finger as she hurried to the phone resting upon the wall. She fumbled the receiver before she held up to her ear. She dialed the number: her tears were so chock full of tears that she believed she called the right number, that is until the tone rang once before the pick up.  
“Hello?” Ashley answered.  
“Ashley—” she choked out.  
“Mia? Mia, are—are you okay?”  
“I need you to do me a favor,” she whimpered into the mouth piece; she sniffled once and then huffed, trying to keep it together but her efforts were futile. There was the sound of rustling paper in the background as Ashley cleared her throat.  
“Okay—what can I do?”  
“Wayne ate all of the food in the pantry while I was away. There is nothing to eat in the house, and I am starving right now. I just—I just—” She stopped, feeling the tears well up inside of her throat.  
“I can't take it anymore,” she pleaded, her voice breaking.  
“Can't take what?”  
“The whole—whole grand scheme of things. I want Lars. I want him. I need him. But I am afraid of telling him about all of this. I am afraid of hurting him. I don't want to hurt him. I—”  
“Mia, do you love him?”  
She hung there in silence with the receiver up to her ear. The question rang through her mind. The answer should have been obvious to her, but she never felt it to the fullest extent until then.  
“Do you love him?” Ashley repeated.  
“I do,” she breathed out, feeling her heart pound harder and faster inside of her chest. “I love him so much. I don't ever want to hurt him.”  
“So—what is it that you would like for me to do, Mia?”  
She sniffled as she brushed away a tear. Her bottom lip twitched before the words left her tongue.  
Ashley gasped at what she heard but she agreed to it after swallowing down her fear.  
“I'll see you soon,” Mia almost breathed out the words before she hung up the phone. Using the back of her fingers, she wiped away more tears and then headed into the front foyer for her coat and her purse. She left the blue and white house and headed up to Ashley's place without another word. She drove in silence the whole way. She couldn't think, but rather focus upon the pavement before her.  
Once she had parked next to the curb, Mia climbed out of the car and padded up to the front step. Ashley greeted her with a nervous expression on her face; and upon walking in through the front door, Mia knew that smell in the foyer anywhere.  
She took her seat in the living room as Ashley left the room for the plate and the fork. She hung there over the couch with a grim look upon her face.  
“I trust you,” Mia told her in a near whisper as she held the fork in one hand and the plate upon her lap.  
She closed her eyes to picture Lars on the backs of her eyelids. She recalled the morning he walked into the bakery, hungry and handsome, and soon there after, they seduced one another.  
Those green eyes taking her back to the deepest roots of her heart. The feel of his hair entwined through her fingers, and then the feel of the hair on his face brushing between her legs and upon her lips. His velvet tongue and earthy mouth. That smooth skin all over his body. Then his body, lanky and sinewy and strong, but perfect for some extra pounds that fit him to where he was even stronger, but alluring and sensuous to her. Her hands itched to feel him again, to hold his sexy body again and find her way into his heart again. Such a beautiful, fair boy, the most in her eye, and one whom she was willing to do something drastic in order to protect both her and himself. The only other boy she had ever loved, but the only one she loved in the truest sense as the sweet and garlicky aroma of the shrimp scampi filled her nose.  
She could already feel the anaphylaxis coming on as she scooped up one of those curled, bright pink and white crawdads with a bit of pasta.  
“I'm ready to die for you,” she whispered as she took a bite.


	65. Chapter 65

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As somebody who’s dealt with poor body image, even dysmorphia, for years, writing this fic has done wonders to help me reconcile my feelings about myself and my body. Anyways, I’ve been on such a roll the past few days that I started writing act 3 last night. Our little man from Denmark has the floor from this point forth <3

Valentine's Day had always been difficult in the past, but this day proved to fair far better than in recent years for Lars, given Mia had had her birthday around this time. There was a slight bittersweet feeling going into the day as Cliff's birthday took place the day before then, but the moment he opened his eyes to that brand new morning, his heart soared with elation and with the sweetest of emotions. He hoped she received his gift for her in the mail that day: he did send it express after all. His mother helped him pick out the color and the texture to help soothe her skin and flaunt her body in the best way possible, and then she sat down with him at the kitchen table in their house with that heavy parchment paper and a spritz of rose water. He was careful to write it all out with the black calligraphy pen, and every word he said rang true: he found it to be as much of a notion of Valentine's Day to her birthday.  
Before he sent it off, he held the scarlet envelope before his mouth and sealed the part where it closed in the “X” shape with a dainty kiss of his rosy red lips; and he returned to his house with a light sensation rising up inside of his chest and a warm feeling in the pit of his hungry stomach. When he set foot back into the house, he leaned up against the panels of the door with a hand upon his chest. He hung there for a long time to feel the beats inside of his chest cavity before he slipped into the other room to satisfy something else.  
He rolled over onto his back while a few wavy strands of hair had strewn over the full rounded flesh upon his face: one rather large piece found its way into the divide between his lips while a part of his bangs raised up over his temple from laying his side for so long during the night. Lars lifted a hand from under the covers to brush off the hair but he never opened his eyes as he moved his chin off from the edge of the comforter. His whole body relaxed as the covers cradled him and bundled him close to the fitted bed sheet as if he lay in a nest. Anything to fill in for Mia's touch.  
Every breath he took in through his nose, his heart warmed with all of his love for her. His fingers on his right hand slid down the smooth skin upon his neck and over the fine contours of his collar bones: such bliss! He only wondered what it felt like to her.  
Meanwhile, his left hand caressed over the filled out, softly rounded shape of his belly, like a low mound rising up from his body. The tips of his fingers stroked the rim and the inside of his navel to feel the soft silky skin and the bit of hair growing all up the middle of his body. He moved his hand back up the gentle curve to feel the warmth radiating from his stomach, that is until a gentle gnawing sensation welled up inside of him. But he could care less: he had grown fuller, rounder, and chubbier, all for her, and all because of her.  
He was a man in love.  
Lars loved to eat at every single opportunity possible, always sneaking in extra food when no one was looking and sometimes eating at strange times of the day like right before he went off to bed so he could feel warm on the inside upon falling asleep. It came from wanting that warm and soft feeling on the inside, from growing up in such a dark, damp, cold archipelago to the north of Germany and the southeast of Sweden, and from simply wanting the absolute most out of life. He never managed to eat more than what his stomach could hold in one sitting, but then when he met Mia at the bakery in Portland, he found himself in an alien position. Those donuts, those signature blood diamond donuts she had on display that morning: rich with the dark chocolate and made nice, lovely, and full with nutmeg, cinnamon, and chili powder, and even fuller and more indulgent with that earthy kick of tequila. Then there was that fiery red frosting on top. That first bite felt something of a sweet seduction, her first two fingers beckoning him to come inside the warm house for a while and ease the icy feeling on his back, but at some point, she encouraged him to eat more and more. She coaxed him to have more, to fill out the capacity of his stomach and move more warmth to the middle of his body. She wanted him to feel warm and full, and she wanted him to feel good about himself.  
All of that icing and all that cake made his whole belly swell but she promised to love him and take care of the ache inside with all of those loving touches. The feel of her lips on his skin, the gentle touch of her fingers all over his body; it all brought joy to eating now and made his experience even fuller than if he had dined alone. Something about those proverbial desserts she gave him taught him to eat a little more next time, to sneak in an extra knob of butter on his English muffin in the morning, or one more scone with his afternoon tea.  
Then they toured in Japan and he could not resist the sight of all of those sushi rolls, that lovely rice, and that smooth macha. Sure enough, whenever he rolled over onto his back in the mornings to caress himself down, his body softened and filled out, growing silkier to the touch by the day, and yet he never lost his power or the tightness of the muscles in his arms and legs. If anything, eating more than his money's worth allowed him to perform better, faster, and harder than he ever could.  
But there was something else to the feeling, a gentle tug within the pit of his stomach and a twitch of his genitals whenever she brought up the idea of stuffing his face utterly silly. It only augmented by her hand and also the idea of seeing himself as sexy for eating so much. He knew it was real when he looked at his own reflection one morning in a full body mirror and beheld the sight of two small gentle bulges over his hips. A pair of slight round curves, two beginner love handles; the infamous ones he had earned while in Japan. Lars lifted the side of his shirt and touched the one on the right with his thumb before giving it a slight pinch. It was velvety and plush, indeed a new seedling and the mere beginning of a roll fat, but when he hitched up his jeans, they flowed with the waist band and made the middle of his body look thicker but also healthier. It was then he set a hand upon his waist to show it off for himself, that he felt comfortable with himself and his body.  
He thought about all the times she lay her arms around his waist to hold him and love him. She held him when he felt full and she always had such a soft, sweet caress. And then there were the belly rubs, perhaps his favorite thing. That soft hand moving about on his skin to ease the tautness after he ate too much; the first time she did it, shivers shot up his spine and all over his skin. The kisses on his belly pronounced the feeling even more, and to the point his toes curled inside of his tennis shoes. When she made love to him, the feeling always started from inside of his stomach.  
But he chose thirty pounds as a limit for himself because he could eat anything and everything, and feel so good inside, and look completely and utterly gorgeous for her as well as himself. He bumped it up another five when he felt he could use a tiny bit more fresh meat on his bones to keep him satisfied for this next stint of the tour.  
Here he was, twenty five pounds heavier than he was almost three months ago but feeling cozy and warm under his blankets, and even more so inside of his body. The rolls over his hips had filled out a slight bit more, and his belly poked out like a small cap of fat on a pot roast, and all of his clothes fit him a bit more snugly, but it was all for a loving purpose; he could still run the tips of his fingers along the fine curvature of his hip bones and the bumpy feel of his rib cage. Something about a touch upon his bones and his knees tickled him, perhaps more so than a touch on his chest or on his waist.  
He folded his arms over his chest to sink into the feeling even more. The sole thing to make this better was if someone lay there next to him to touch him and hold him. He thought about Mia laying there next to him, tendrils of her dark hair dangling down from the side of her head and onto his arm and her skin as soft and smooth as a sun kissed daquiri straight out of Puerto Rico, but her dark hair morphed into flaming red waves and she became Dave, and then the red hair lightened to golden blond to signify James. He had this feeling that Mia knew nothing about his truest self, his self when alone, even if she came closer and closer to him which each touch and each bite of food inserted into his mouth. Next to that feeling was another feeling that what she witnessed through her eyes stood on a much more different pole from him. He was about to doze off back to sleep when the phone rang.  
Lars scrambled out of bed and darted into the next room, over a small pile of crumpled tissues resting upon the floor and around the small couch to the kitchen to pick up the phone before the machine caught it first. He rubbed his eye with one hand and picked up the receiver with the other so he fumbled it a bit and almost dropped it on the floor. He caught it and cleared his throat before holding it up to his face.  
“Hello?” he answered with a crackle in his throat.  
“Hi, baby,” she greeted him in a voice so sweet she may as well have been right there to kiss him good morning.  
“Oh—good morning, my love.” He could not resist the smile crossing over his face. “Happy Valentine's Day. Or rather—glædelig Valentinsdag.”  
“Feliz día de San Valentín,” she replied with a soft rustling sound on her end; he pictured her showing him that warm relaxed smile, the very same she showed him before she rubbed his belly after a good portion of food.  
“Did you get my gift?” he asked her.  
“I did! It was the first thing I woke up to this morning—I found it on the front step. And I knew it was something good.”  
“I also—er, call that your birthday gift, so—happy birthday.” He stuck out the tip of his tongue to wet the edge of his bottom lip: the sink stood right there in front of him, but he would have to put down the phone to reach for a glass in the cupboard over his head. “Are you wearing it right now?”  
“I am. I wish I was there right now so I could parade it about for you.”  
He closed his eyes and rubbed his brow as he pictured her there with him.  
“Did you eat breakfast yet?” she asked him in a light, airy whisper.  
“No—I like, just got up out of bed. I was laying there in the bed and—feeling myself—trying to imagine you here with me. Forgive me for not being there right now.”  
“Just two more weeks, papacito.” His toes curled at that last word. She served the role of the feeder but she bowed down before him with that word. However his favorite was “chico hermoso”: that tickled him, much like her light kisses on his nipples or his chest, and then it introduced the light, lovely feeling inside of him whenever she whispered it into his ear.  
“I am thinking of feeding you breakfast right here in my kitchen,” she started in a tone as smooth and velvety as melted dulce de leche drizzled over a sliver of buttered toast. He leaned his back against the wall with his lips parted and his eyes closed.  
“Tied up?” he played along with her in a husky voice.  
“Oh, yes. In the same chair as before. In the same spot. I am wearing those thigh high boots that you absolutely love.”  
He nibbled on his bottom lip and swallowed, the back of throat parched and dry with thirst: how he wanted a drink of water, a cup of tea, and then a bite of English muffin but her grip was too strong upon his crotch. He wanted her there with him.  
“What about—here?” he suggested, clearing his throat.  
“There?”  
“Yeah. I did just get up, after all, darling.”  
“On the couch?”  
“You wanna tie me up on my couch.”  
“I do.”  
He raised his eyebrows at that but never opened his eyes.  
“Do you have your shirt off?” she asked him.  
“Had it off all night long.”  
“Oh, boy! So I could've been there rubbing your beautiful belly.”  
“Oh, God, I miss your touch—” He licked his lips again and added a soft gag of the throat.  
“Is everything okay?” Her tone stayed gentle and he opened his eyes as he ran a finger along the edge of his mouth.  
“Yeah, I'm just like—really, really thirsty right now. Hungry, too. Thinking of a—a—a, er, a cup of tea and an English muffin with lots of butter.”  
“Eat lots of butter, baby boy.” He liked that one, too, but not as much as her Spanish pet names.  
“Lots of butter—on my back—and your bra is unbuttoned.”  
“My nipples are pointed.”  
“What about your cunt—how's your cunt feeling—”  
“Right now?”  
“Yeah.”  
“A little damp. Not as wet as the ocean or the Columbia, but think of a light drizzle over the summit of Mount Hood.”  
“My dick is slowly turning into Mount Hood—wait.”  
She burst out laughing and he followed with a soft chuckle.  
“I'm gonna give you so many belly rubs when I see you,” she told him.  
“And I'm just gonna—ride that wave, honey pie. Ride the wave swirling straight out of your toy box.”  
“By the way, I heard 'Honey Pie' yesterday.”  
“Did you now?” The corner of his mouth lifted to form a smirk.  
“I did. While at work. Sandra was playing it while Marcia and I were—coincidentally making danishes.”  
“Oh—” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I've got to hear it now.”  
“You go listen while you enjoy your breakfast, baby,” she told him.  
“And you go take care of yourself, my darling,” he breathed out, his voice slurring from the dryness inside of his throat; he slid his back down the smooth wall and took a seat on the hard floor underneath the phone.  
“Picture me playing with your hair,” she whispered into the mouth piece, “playing with your hair and running my hands through it from the roots outward, while I kiss you and feed you breakfast. Breakfast straight out of my hands. Nice and spicy to get your motor running—”  
“Shit,” he said out of the blue.  
“What's the matter?”  
“I don't have chorizo. Oh, well.”  
“I'll make sure I bring some with me on our little trip,” she assured him, bringing her voice back to a whisper.  
“Oh, yeah—” he breathed out, running the tips of his fingers over his eye to rub out the sleep and to ease the feeling inside of him. “That's—that's—mmm, yes.”  
“Thank you again, baby,” she told him, “now you go and be a good boy for mama and eat your breakfast.” She made a kissing noise on the other end and he licked his lips before puckering them up to do the same. He reached up to hang up the phone but he never stood to his feet right at that moment. Lars remained there with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out before him. Her voice was smooth like silk, a tapestry of fine silk draped over his head and then wrapped around his waist. He lifted his hands to touch the soft skin upon his face and then the rough, fledgling bristle emerging all along on the edge of his jaw.  
“I'm not gonna shave again,” he said to himself, closing his eyes. “Not for another two weeks.”  
He dropped his hands to his neck and his throat, and then his shoulders. He caressed the top of his chest, and the sprouts of nappy dark hair growing over his breasts and all around his nipples; he shuddered at his own touch, complete with an almost pained, very soft whimper leaving his lips. His fingers slid down from his chest and onto his belly. A quiet grumble left his stomach which was then followed by a peculiar feeling of nausea, like feeling car sick.  
“Oh, fucking hell—I need to eat something,” he moaned, lifting himself off of the floor then padding across the linoleum to his small refrigerator, which stood smaller than him. He picked out the soft blue butter dish containing a whole stick of butter and picked up the stick, as if he was about to rub the whole top of that smooth butter all over his chest, but then again, he was alone in the house. He closed the door, and set down the dish on the counter, and then lunged for the English muffins on the counter top, and took one of its hiding place. His hands shook and jittered as he stuck both halves into the toaster on his left.  
“God—” he gasped, clutching onto his stomach. He opened the refrigerator again, this time for the sliced Havarti in the bottom drawer. He had a layer of butter on the tips of his fingers by the time he shoved a slice of cheese into his mouth. But his eyes rolled to the top of his head as he ate up the slice.  
“Mmm, I needed that,” he said to himself with his mouth full; he put the cheese back into the drawer and closed the door, and returned to the stove to put on the kettle. He leaned against the edge of the counter and rubbed his eyes again. Two more weeks by himself here in this house, that is until he flew up to Portland to meet up with Mia again.  
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. That feeling of hunger, both inside of his stomach and down below his waist, both proved to be much worse when combined together. The toaster seemed to tick on forever while the kettle remained quiet there on the stove top behind him. He reached into the cupboard over for a small glass and poured himself a cup full of water out of the tap, and drank it down in two large gulps. He groaned out in relief, but it did not suffice. He needed something else as he set down the glass.  
Lars nibbled on his bottom lip as he slipped one hand under the band of his underwear to touch himself. He just had his bare hand to use and he was out of tissues. But he needed relief before the muffin popped out of the toaster crispy and the kettle boiled so he could make himself a cup of black tea, and thus he touched himself right there in the middle of his kitchen. He stuck out the tip of his tongue as he poked, stroked, and groped at himself, still with butter on his fingers. He bowed his head in hopes to alleviate the gnawing, sick feeling inside of his stomach but all he could do was touch himself.  
“God, help me,” he muttered to himself as his first two fingers and his thumb fondled over his skin. “Come on, dammit—come—on—come—”  
The halves of the English muffin popped out of the toaster and he let out a loud sigh. He took his hand out from his drawers and washed off before handling a plate and the kettle.


	66. Chapter 66

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Julia, Julia, ocean child, calls me,  
> so I sing a song of love, Julia.  
> Julia, seashell eyes, windy smile, calls me,  
> so I sing a song of love, Julia.."  
> -"Julia", The Beatles

He leaned back against the wall with his tennis racket in one hand and his glossy slate gray mug of tea in the other while the first side of The White Album played upon his record player. Beautiful pearly glossy white vinyl, brand new, right out of the safety of the sleeve. The pristine liner notes smelled as though they came straight off of the press: the tips of his fingers caressed over the raised black lettering all along the columns as he examined the stark but clean black and white color scheme. The music he knew and loved, and found as a young boy, about to cradle him again like the warmth inside of his stomach on a cold day.  
Lars closed his eyes as he brought the racket closer to his chest during the song “Martha My Dear.” He relaxed every inch of his body before stretching out his legs before him. The coolness of the carpet kissed the backs of his knees and ankles, and in turn sent chills across his skin and up his spine. He didn't feel like wearing clothes that day, anyway.  
He took a large sip of his tea, that sharp bite of the black tea leaves hitting the back of his throat: it reminded him of the flavor of Mia's lips upon the tip of his tongue while he gave her one of those other kind of kisses. But at the moment, it was what he wanted, to be alone in his mess of a house with his mess of a mind. That is, until like a moment of brilliance, he felt something inside of him itch in a peculiar part of him.  
It wasn't the music, although for a split second, he thought he should swap out Paul McCartney and whip out one of his dirty blues albums to scratch his back for him. That sinking feeling inside of the pit of his stomach and the settling coolness upon the skin on his belly, which hung out in the open. That gaping hole next to him. That echo surrounding him that he knew all too well, starting from the first morning he walked to school alone. That reminder that he was all alone again with the voices from the schoolyard nipping at him, even with his parents close by.  
He told himself a two more weeks before he caught the next flight up to Portland. He swore she would hold him when she saw him again and he would return the favor to her with his tongue down her throat and his fingers on her sides. He thought of parading for her again the same way he did for the trip up the Oregon Coast, and perhaps have the same tickle on his belly again while having the cold oceanic wind at his back. But therein rested something more, something else, something that needed to be exorcized in a better fashion than running his fingers over his shaft.  
Lars took another sip of tea before flicking his head back to move his bangs out of his eyes. He was due for another trim at Curl Up and Dye, with the hope that Mia would wash his hair in one of those black sinks and then groom his long beautiful hair with a black comb and give his bangs a light snip to where they hung over his eyebrows. The tip of his tongue ran over his bottom lip to take in the lingering black tea there. His hands itched, and not in the manner in which he knew he was about to hold a check for performing before some sixty thousand people in at a large place down in Los Angeles. The itch only persisted as “Blackbird” came onto his record player.  
In a way, he and Mia were like blackbirds, getting together in the most remote and untouched of places such as the Oregon Coast. He spoke very little of the two of them to James as he was more often than not with Ashley, and he had no opportunity to do that with Kirk as he was often up at Mia's friends Marcia and Sonia's house now. It all added to that elusive itch, digging away at his mind and at his body.  
He needed to do something else, something better as he finished his cup of tea. He smacked his lips and set the mug down on the carpet next to him for a moment before he climbed up onto his feet.  
The song “Piggies” soon crackled on over his record player. He nodded his head in response with a smirk on his face. It was crazy, but he needed to exorcize the pig out of him. Two weeks away but he knew the days would creep closer to him if he remained idle.  
He leaned his racket against the wall before he strode back into his bedroom, still in his underwear. He ignored his disheveled bedspread and instead lunged for his closet door. He slid it to the side before he knelt down upon the carpet to delve through his closet with the bottoms of his shirts and his coats brushing over the crown of his head. Between his old clothes brought over to the United States from Denmark—clothes that probably did not fit him anymore given from them being the clothes belonging to a scrawny, underfed teenage boy—to bottles of glitter and glue, there was too much here to organize and not enough to disorganize. He picked snippets of construction paper off of the floor, paper he had no idea existed until then: some pieces were stuck together with glue; at some point, a bottle of pipe cleaners had tipped over, but only two of them landed on the floor. It was as if a crazy crafts person lived in this house and not the drummer of a rock n' roll band.  
But he peeked behind a stack of plastic boxes with blue lids to spot a burlap sack the size of a small watermelon resting in the corner. He reached for the sack by the pull strings, right as a small black spider crawled off of one side and into a small gap in the corner of the wall. Lars slipped two fingers into the mouth of the sack and pulled it open: the black Polaroid camera, accompanied with a flash bulb and a cap over the lens, as good as the day he brought it over from Copenhagen.  
“There it is—” he muttered to himself, lifting himself into a squatting position but never standing up. He took off the cap and turned the lens towards his face to blow off the bit of dust on the top. He had forgotten about the heavy weight of the camera, and yet it struck him as so delicate that when he lost his balance and fell right back onto his butt and then his back, he gripped onto it. But he paid no attention to the fact he kept one finger upon the shutter button and took a picture of himself with the bright flash.  
He blinked several times while laying on his side and holding the camera upside down over his head. The camera spat out a photograph from the slot on the front of the camera and dropped it on the floor right next to his head. Still holding onto the camera, he lifted himself into an upright position and then set it down on the floor next to him.  
He turned around to pick the photograph up off of the floor, and waved it about to better bring it into clarity. He held, in his hand, the picture of himself laying on his back and looking at the camera upside down with his eyes big and wide and his mouth open part of the way. Lars gaped at himself.  
“What the—fock—I don't actually look like that, do I?” he asked aloud as “Rocky Raccoon” started playing; but when he examined his body, he noticed the slightly full curvature of both his chest and his belly, flattered and made smooth by the bright light from the flash: the skin on his legs was milky and pale, but smooth looking, kissable in fact. One knee was bent up, while his other knee carried a slight bend to it. He looked as though he had just fucked and looked at Mia through a lens of wanting more. He had an idea right then.  
He was going to turn into Narcissus for a moment, or perhaps several moments. A mirror never treated him or the roundness of his face and the shapeliness of his neck all too well, and so a camera proved to be far worse than he imagined. But he knew if he ever lost weight, or any part of his body, or gained even more weight to become the textbook fat guy, or if in the event Mia ever left his life, he had to preserve himself in that sole moment while laying right there on the floor: stalwart and masculine, with his long hair intact sprawling down over his shoulders from all sides of his head, and yet with that pleasant round and full shape to his body, or “pleasingly plump” as she called him. He needed to capture the moment he was himself in his most unabashed form.  
Lars placed the camera down on the carpet next to him, and then he lay back down on his side there on the carpet. He placed the side of his head in his right hand before holding the camera up from his body with his free hand. His closet may have been a mess, but he cared only about the handful of Polaroids he was about to take of himself. He wished for an automatic button, where he could rest the camera upon the floor and set a timer of sorts before taking it so he could be able to place his hand on his hip to emphasize the curvature of his body, so he took several shots of himself in the same manner as the first one. Twice he rolled onto his back for shots from his chest up: both times, he spread his hair out from his head. He thought of standing up to suspend the camera right above his head to take an aerial shot of himself but he decided to keep it there on the carpet.  
Within time, Lars had a small stack of Polaroids on the carpet before him and all manner of flash spots in his eyes. He shook all of ten of the photographs before he spread them out on the floor before his crossed legs and examined each and every one of them. There was one right beneath his left knee, and the song “Julia” came on his record player in the other room. What better timing to have that song playing when he picked up that Polaroid. This one showed him holding the camera straight over his forehead so it looked as though his bangs hung down into his eyes, but the tip of his nose had a nice, almost buttonlike quality to it and his lips maintained their soft cherry red color. He had lay his right knee upon the floor but lifted his left knee up so he opened up his hips; his belly hung ever so slightly to his right side as if he was letting all of the juices inside of him move over to one side, and his belly button poked out from his middle. Meanwhile, the light from the flash shone over the dip in his chest from his breast bone and left his nipples looking a shade darker. He looked soft and sweet, perfect for her.  
“That's the one,” he said to himself as he beheld it before his face in both of his hands. He knew he would give all of these to Mia for her viewing pleasure when he saw her in two weeks time, but that was the one, the photograph to show her and give to her as a notion that he would stay beautiful forever. He kept that one on the top of the stack as he picked them all up before climbing off of the floor. He stood there right before his closet door which hung ajar so if he took any more of himself, he either had to clean up or at least close the door; before him was his unmade bed. But before he stooped down to pick up the camera from the floor, he glanced down at his body, at his nipples poking out from either side of his chest and his belly hanging out; he could still see most of his feet, but the tops of his thighs slipped into hiding.  
All of those memories barged into his mind once again: the taunting voices of the children back in Danish school all around him, mocking the full shape of his face and his large cheek bones. Too round and soft to even be considered a boy, too pretty to be loved and kissed by a girl, and too strange to be loved and kissed by a boy. He grimaced at the sight beneath his head but he reminded himself of what he had done. Careful not to hurt himself, he lifted his free hand and set it right on the roundest part of his belly. He didn't move his palm or any of his fingers as he let those voices sear throughout his mind again. He never held onto them but he could hear them again.  
Lars nibbled on his lip as his body started to shake from the cold in the room.  
And then Mia burst into his mind. All of the love she had given him up to that point. She nourished him and uncovered all of those hidden emotions within him. He did it all for her as much as he did it for himself.  
He then lifted his hand to give himself a loving pat on the higher part of his belly. His skin was soft and smooth, almost like crushed velvet, and he could only imagine what he felt like to her. He switched up the pat on his skin to a brief gentle rub and then adjusted the Polaroids in his hand to set them on the side table next to the right arm of his couch.  
“Just two weeks,” he said to himself upon returning to his room to pick up the camera and return it to its hiding place, “fourteen more days and she and I have the winds to our backs.” He gave his hair a light toss before doubling back to his record player to put in the second side of The White Album, the side with “Honey Pie”, to finish out his Valentine's morning.


	67. Chapter 67

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I posted Act 1 (the first 90,000-odd words) on my Wattpad just because I felt like it. I'd rather continue on here because I don't really like Wattpad, but my username there is my "other" author name: hcnewell. Anyways, enjoy this next one xoxo

He couldn't hurry off the plane faster with the soles of his red Chucks padding over the carpet of the terminal gate: he kept one hand on the strap of his overnight bag before him. Everything seemed to move in slow motion with each step closer to the end and into the rest of the Portland airport. The last thing he remembered upon setting foot on the hard tile floor was the stack of Polaroids in his pocket.  
He spotted her standing before the benches, with her wavy black hair spilling out from underneath the hem of her light purple knit cap to protect her head from the soft mist of rain and her dark eyes jumping out at him from her light brown skin, like a cup of creamy mocha on a cold, inclement day such as the one outside. Her full figured body never felt warmer or softer in his arms; he buried his face in her chest upon coming in contact with her. Her hands stroked over his back while her breasts pressed against his chest. Her hair smelled soft and sweet, and it was damp to the touch, and he knew she had taken a shower for him just prior to arriving at the airport to pick him up and take him home with her.  
Lars puckered his lips and gave her a fat kiss underneath the curve all along her jaw, but then she lay her hands on either side of his face to kiss him on the mouth. How he missed the softness and the sweetness of her lips, and the juicy feel of the love handles upon her hands.  
“God—I cannot believe how much I have missed you,” he confessed into her face in a soft voice, soft enough for her to hear over the noise inside of the airport. He felt her forearms on his hips, followed by her hands on the seat of his pants.  
“I have missed the feel of your body,” she whispered, squeezing his butt; his toes curled inside of his shoes and the first fledgling butterflies appeared inside of his stomach. “A voice just isn't enough.”  
He kissed her again as her hands slid up to the lower part of his back.  
“Are you getting softer?” she asked him as the smile crossed her face.  
“A tiny bit, yeah.”  
“I feel you getting a little more love back here—” She patted the top of his butt before reaching under his coat and his sweat shirt to hold onto the smooth skin making up his small, slight love handles. The soft pads upon her fingers stroked over his waist; the tip of her tongue stuck to one corner of her mouth and then moved over to the other one, and then she ran it over the edges of her top teeth.  
“I cannot wait to see you without clothes tonight,” she whispered into his face and he showed her a smirk.  
“And I cannot wait to cuddle you, fock you, and then cuddle you again,” he retorted, kissing her lips again. Mia flicked her head to the side to beckon him towards the exit of the airport.  
“Come on, baby, let's go.”  
He pushed a lock of hair back from his face as she put her arm around his shoulders to lead him out of there. Before reaching the large sliding glass doors, he slipped his hand into the left back pocket of her jeans so he could feel her butt again without taking them off first. They walked in sync with one another once the doors slid open and beheld the cool early spring rain falling upon downtown Portland. Lars bowed his head as they stepped out from beneath the awning and crossed the pavement to the parking lot. He heard a jingling of keys as they approached her little car parked underneath a slender black oak tree with minute buds all over the branches.  
“We won't be going to my house just yet,” she told him. “We'll be stopping by Marcia and Sonia's place for the night.”  
“What for?”  
“New paint job, new refrigerator, and a new bed. My place is utterly teeming with movers and painters.”  
“Oh, thank God! I hated that bed. I still have no idea how you were able to sleep on that thing…”  
“And besides I still have to pack.”  
“I see. So when are we going to Astoria?” he asked her as he let go of her; he balanced himself on the curb in front of the car on the way around to the passenger side door.  
“First thing tomorrow morning,” she replied as she stuck the key into the lock on her side, “it's only about an hour from town so we can leave right after breakfast.”  
“Ah, so it will be very similar to our little trip up the Oregon Coast,” he followed along.  
“Exactly!” She unlocked the door and he threw open the door behind the front passenger seat, before climbing in for himself. She plopped down behind the wheel and closed the door. He reached behind him for the seat belt when she spoke again.  
“I'll be bringing my purple pillow with me,” she told him as she held the ignition key in between her index finger and her thumb.  
“Purple pillow… oh! The one I got you!”  
“Oh, yes. I have been sleeping with it every night for almost two months straight.”  
“To mimic the feeling of a soft, warm body next to you?”  
The car roared to life right then.  
“To mimic the feeling of a soft, warm body next to me,” she echoed, reaching behind her to buckle her seat belt. She shifted the car into reverse and they pulled out of the space, and straightened out towards the rest of the lot.  
“I think I should tell you…” he started as they neared the driveway, “and forgive me for not telling you this sooner, too—we are not coming anywhere near Portland on this stint of our tour, but we do have two weeks off in between our show in El Paso and our other one in Oklahoma City.”  
“Come to the competition,” she begged him.  
“Your little baking competition?”  
“Yes. I need you there. Marcia and Sandra want you there, too. I need your velvet tongue and your soft tummy there.”  
“Ah, you want me to be resident taster, don't you?”  
“If you want.” She shrugged as she took a glimpse both ways. “We'll be baking our goods for everyone coming, but we need to be impressive for the judges. Also—” She turned to the left to head out of the airport. “—Marcia and I talked to Sandra about the bakery down in Eureka. And yes, if we win, she will put some of the money down on that one as well as one in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. But she doesn't think there will be enough for one in the Bay Area, though.”  
“But there is Eureka,” he pointed out.  
“There is Eureka. But I am not sure if I want to leave Portland, though. I do love this city. I have lived here almost nineteen years after all.”  
“And you have got friends here, too.”  
“I have friends here, too.”  
She raised a hand from the edge of the steering wheel to massage her temple. He glanced over at her with his eyebrows knitted together.  
“You okay?”  
“Yeah, I just—have a little headache. Remember when I got hit in the head?”  
“How could I forget?”  
“Well, I got hit in the head again. Twice.”  
“What happened?”  
“Well, the first time was a few weeks ago, on the first. I was taking a shower and I dropped the soap on the tub. As I was standing back up, I smacked the top of my head on the little shelf that holds the soap.”  
“Ooh, ouch!”  
“Yeah, right on the edge, too. And the other time was just the other day while at the salon. Dani closed the door on my face and I fell back—like onto my ass—and then when I got back up right as the door opened again, I fell back again after I hit the front of my head on the door panel.”  
“What was going on there?”  
“I don't even remember now. But—” She started chuckling. “—it was kind of funny now that I think about it in retrospect.”  
As they trekked down Multnomah Boulevard towards Marcia and Sonia's house, Lars sank down in the seat a bit while he stared out the window at the low, buttoned down houses. And then he remembered what was in his pocket.  
“Oh!” he began, turning back to her with a sly grin upon his face. “I have a little something for you.”  
“More things for me?”  
“Well, of course. It will be something you will definitely cherish, and love, and keep with you forever.”  
“As if I don't do that already,” she vowed with a wink and he felt his face grow warm. They turned the corner and neared the little two story house that started to feel familiar to him. He flashed back on the night of his birthday when the crazy man burst through the front door and broke a few things for almost no reason.  
“So how's the doorknob doing here?” he inquired as they pulled up to the curb.  
“Still not fixed,” she answered in a frank tone as she lifted the parking brake.  
“Well, shit.”  
“Eh, it's okay. It's kind of a pain in the ass for Marcia and Sonia if either of them are running late, but they are making do, and so am I.”  
She switched off the car and they both climbed back out into the rain in unison. Lars picked his overnight bag out of the back seat and then closed the door with his left hip. The wet grass squeaked underneath the soles of their shoes as they crossed the front yard to the gate on the side of the house.  
“Also, Kirk's here,” she told him as she jiggled the lock on the other side of the gate to open it.  
“Not surprised,” he admitted as he followed her to the side of the house.  
“Although it's getting a little heated between the three of them,” she lowered her voice as they neared the kitchen door.  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. All I am going to say is Marcia and Sonia are both intensely attracted to him—I mean, they both have slept with him, but they—they—I don't know how to describe it. You have to witness it for yourself to understand it.”  
Mia opened the kitchen door right as Marcia was in the middle of speaking.  
“—well, if the two of us are gonna go out with him, we should at least trade off on certain days—oh, hey! There they are!”  
Lars ran his fingers over his eyebrows to push his damp bangs out of his eyes to take a better look at Marcia, who leaned against the counter to speak to Sonia, who had seated herself at the kitchen table with a white mug in both hands. The cozy kitchen smelled of coffee, rice cooking, complete with a spicy overtone of cologne from Kirk; both sisters were wrapped in bright soft looking sweaters with plunging necklines, Marcia wore bright blue to bring out her black hair and her eyes while Sonia had on hot pink with glittery threads embedded within. Their faces lit up at the sight of the two of them.  
“There's the other man of the hour, looking all round and plump and juicy and healthy,” said Sonia as part of her greeting before taking a sip from her mug.  
“Other man of the hour,” he repeated, shutting the door behind him. Mia put her arm around his lower back so she had an excuse to set her hand on his hip.  
“Yeah, we were just talking about Kirk,” answered Marcia, “he's all we ever talk about anymore.”  
“I wouldn't say anymore,” Sonia insisted.  
“Well, for the most part, anyways.”  
“Hey, it's not me who wants to take him to the baking competition thing.”  
“Well, you and Ashley agreed to take him to school with you at some point for modeling.”  
“Marsh, you've seen him in his birthday suit and so have I. How nobody could want to draw that reg is beyond me.”  
Lars snickered at the thought of Kirk standing there in the middle of a classroom with no clothes on.  
“Now, unless you want Lars to do it or at least join in with him, I don't know what else to tell you, Sonia,” Marcia pointed out, and he clasped a hand to his mouth as the three of them turned to him.  
“I don't know,” he confessed through his fingers, “being in front of all of those people with no clothes on—”  
“Oh, come on, you perform in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people,” Marcia scoffed.  
“Yeah, but at least I keep my underwear on!” And the three of them erupted into laughter before Mia took him by the hand to lead him out of the kitchen. He couldn't hear what Sonia had said as they fell out of earshot and headed towards the stairwell.  
“Do you see what I was talking about?” she asked him in a low voice as they trotted up the stairs together.  
“Erm, yes.”  
She led him into the guest bedroom, where she had kept her overnight bag of clothes and some other things. He was careful to set down his bag on the floor at the foot of the bed, and then he turned to her right as she shut the door. She whirled around to face him with a impish grin upon her face.  
“So,” she started in a low voice.  
“So what?” he dumbly asked as he peeled off his jacket.  
“What have you for me?”  
“Oh, right. That—”  
He lay his jacket on the foot of the bed before he reached into his jeans pocket for the small stack of Polaroids, and found his favorite one stayed on top.  
“I took these on Valentine's Day,” he told her, spreading them out in his hands as if they were playing cards. “And if you are wondering—yes, I brought the camera with me.”  
She brought a hand to her chest as she took one in the middle and held it before her face. She lay it on the bedspread next to his coat; she examined each and every one of them. She clutched at herself upon looking at his body, posing at her in those photographs: he held his favorite in his left hand and he nodded to it to emphasize it.  
“Oh—” she breathed out.  
“That one is especially for you,” he whispered to her, “may I be more than gorgeous to you forever.” He set a hand on his hip and cocked out the middle of his body so as to accentuate his waist. She began breathing heavy.  
“Oh—Oh, holy fucking shit—”  
“So? What do you think?” He leaned in closer to her face with his lips separated by a hair.  
“Oh, my God.”  
“Sexy?”  
“Oh—Oh, my God, you're so hot—did you just eat there?”  
“I did. Breakfast. About a half an hour after we got off of the phone, too.”  
“Oh, so, so sexy—fuck me—”  
“Gladly, skat.” He lunged for her lips as she put her arms around his waist. The inside of her mouth was as warm and welcoming as the last time. He ran the tip of his tongue along the smooth, glossy edges of teeth just cleaned. Gentle but internal groans escaped her throat with each grope of his body; he closed his eyes as he felt the two of them sinking down towards the floor. She lay down on the carpet so he straddled her hips and unbuttoned her jeans. He hung over her face and strands of his hair dangled down towards her brow, her cheek, and her chin.  
“Shall we dance?” he asked her in a near whisper.  
“Come here,” she breathed out in a husky, airy voice. “Come to mama, baby boy.”  
He tugged off her jeans down to her ankles to reveal her plain underwear, but he did fly up to Portland to fret over it. He peeled off her panties and she spread her legs for him. She shaved, and there, right before his eyes, her lips welcomed him like the frilly hot pink orchid he knew all too well. He stripped off his shirt to show her his body before he fell onto his hands and knees.  
“Come to mama, baby—come to mama. You dirty, filthy dog, you—”  
He leaned in between her legs with kisses down the inside of both of her thighs. She gazed into his face for a few seconds before he licked his lips and kissed her right on the clit. Careful and slow, he ran his tongue along that delicate, filmy skin; he closed his eyes to take in all of her flavors: earthy and spicy, like a shot of tequila straight to the stomach at sunrise. A soft moan escaped her throat, followed by another one a bit louder, once he slithered his tongue into the slit. Much heartier, bit of a bite, almost like vinegar, but delicious nonetheless. Her body writhed at the smoothness of his tongue inside of her pussy.  
He took his tongue out when a bit of drool ran down his chin and the sound of a brass section floated up from downstairs. Marcia and Sonia were playing music for them. It took him a second to realize it was The Specials.  
“How appropriate,” he muttered under his breath as he gave her soft light kiss on the lips.


	68. Chapter 68

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Don't try and fight me,  
> 'cause I surround you.  
> I really like it, baby,  
> I want to be your candy.."  
> -"Candy", Bikini Kill

“So twenty five pounds, right?” she whispered to him as she hovered over him there on the guest bed. She still had her jeans and her underwear off whereas he had removed his shirt by the time he had lay down there. She had placed the Polaroids in a neat stack on the nightstand to the right side of the bed for safe keeping.  
“Roughly—” Lars croaked out as he ran the tips of his fingers along the soft curve on his waist. “Why? You wanna—you wanna feed me?”  
She lapped her tongue out of her mouth as she gazed into his eyes: fresh tendrils of hair hung right above his face. A light glow appeared on her face and her shoulders as he knew she was aroused.  
“You need more food—” she whispered, “you are not big enough.”  
“Well, what's stopping you?” he teased her, slipping his hands behind his head to accentuate his chest and his armpits. She licked her lips and winked at him.  
“Wait right here.” She tapped the end of his nose before climbing off of the bed and stooping down for her panties and her jeans. Once she buttoned up, she hurried out of the room. Lars lay there on his back with his hands underneath his head and his small, slightly round belly exposed to the warm air inside of the room. He closed his eyes as Mia's voice floated up from the kitchen downstairs, followed by Marcia's voice, and then Sonia, and then Kirk. He raised an eyebrow at his voice but he also shrugged.  
An itching sensation appeared on his belly, right over his stomach, and he lifted a hand to massage that part with two of the tips of his fingers. Another ten pounds before he hit that number, and yet they were set to go on tour in a little less than two weeks. He needed that weight; his body even began itching for it now. He could feel the gnawing sensation inside of his stomach, or perhaps it was all a part of his imagination. But he needed something. He needed to eat for himself and he needed to eat for her. For a second, it didn't what he put in his mouth as long as he took something to eat right as Mia returned to the room with something in her hand.  
He opened his eyes then raised his head to see the box of plain vanilla wafers.  
“I asked them if they had some kind of chocolate to make these a little bit—'fuller' in flavor,” she started, closing the door with her hip, “but I think these will do just the trick. Sonia said she was going to get rid of these by baking something, but she told me you could have them. There are also some Napoleons and some blondies in the refrigerator, and Marcia is making you a big fat sandwich as we speak right now.”  
He slipped the tip of his tongue to one corner of his mouth, stroked it over the top of his bottom lip, and kept it there on the other corner as she sashayed closer to him. She opened the top lid and reached into the plastic bag on the inside as she returned to her spot there on the side of the bed next to him. He relaxed right there on the bed with his one hand on his belly and his other behind his head; he could feel his heart beginning to pound harder inside of his chest, which in turn sent a rush of blood to his hips and his genitals: his shaft started to throb right underneath his jeans and his underwear.  
“I,” she started, taking a golden yellow cookie with a rounded top right out of the box and holding it before his nose, “am going to blow up your pretty little belly like a balloon.”  
“Behage.” He opened his mouth and she placed it on his tongue. The vanilla smacked him right in the center of his mouth, and the cookie crumbled all around his teeth with each gyration of his jaw. He swallowed it down then pointed at his mouth for more. She followed suit with a second one, and the same happened there. She gave him another, and another, and another, and several more—even feeding herself some along the way, but she took out a cookie, one at a time, for his eating pleasure, until the box ran empty.  
“You ate that whole thing,” she told him with a grin on her face.  
“You had some, too,” he pointed out, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. She flashed him a smirk.  
“Wait right here, baby boy.”  
She headed back out the door with the empty box in hand. He could feel all of those wafers inside of his stomach already making their way to his waist, his hips, and his thighs. But he did not feel full yet, especially when she returned to the room with the small frosted glass plate of ten Napoleons, straight out of the refrigerator.  
“Just lie back and open your little cake hole…”  
“Do it.”  
His mouth crunched full of the bite of the first Napoleon, with the pastry crisp and sweet, the chocolate on top luscious and cold, and the cream on the inside icy and loaded full of good healthy fat. She was careful to feed him the rest; meanwhile, she took three for herself. Even though he could feel the pressure on his belly, he still wasn't full by the time she took the plate downstairs for the blondies, a whole dozen of them, cold and crisp, straight out of the refrigerator; before then, they were inside of Marcia and Sonia's oven.  
“Eat—Eat, baby—papacito—”  
She ate one for herself whereas he may as well have taken the whole plate for himself. He lay there on his back with his eyes closed and his hands resting on his stomach. The feeling rose inside of him but there still wasn't enough inside of him.  
“Had enough?” she asked him, bringing her face closer to him. He wet his bottom lip before he opened his eyes again to take a look at her.  
“Had enough?” she repeated.  
He rolled his head over to look at her straight on.  
“You can't be serious,” he stated, clearing his throat. She raised her eyebrows at him but she never removed the smile from her face.  
“Oh, really? You want your lunch now?” She climbed up from the side of the bed.  
“Please.”  
“Would you like some more?”  
“Behage—”  
He lay there, breathing heavy and listening to his stomach make soft grumbles from all of the pastries inside of him. But he needed it. He needed as much as she, Marcia, and Sonia could give him right there in the house. He belched in his throat and that helped, a little bit.  
Mia returned to the room with a rather large sandwich in one hand and a cup of pudding in the other. He belched in his throat again as she pushed the door closed with her hip again. She returned to her spot on the bed; she set down the pudding cup and the accompanying spoon for a moment to unbutton his jeans using just her index finger and her thumb. He felt his waist rise upon the release of that button there; his hips relaxed at the feel of the waist band letting loose. He burped in his throat a third time as she uncovered the pudding and fed him four spoonfuls of it. Smooth, crisp, and loaded with chocolate.  
“May I ask?” he started as she scraped the sides of the cup with the spoon and stuck it into her mouth for herself.  
“It will help this sexy sandwich go down smoother,” she assured him, setting the empty cup and the spoon on the nightstand next to the Polaroids. She picked up the sandwich from the bed: slices of pastrami with Havarti and crisp lettuce on toasted sourdough bread. He sniffed a bit, picking up the pepper corns on the pastrami and the bite of the cheese.  
“Oh, I see—” He was cut off by her inserting the first side of the sandwich into his mouth. The meat and the cheese danced together on his tongue while the lettuce fanned him a bit to keep him cool against the wave of warmth about to knock him sideways. His eyes rolled up to the back of his head as the spices from the meat brought another rush of blood to his waist and his genitals. It was nothing like eating chorizo, which made his heart pound so hard inside of his chest that it made him blush, but he could feel it pouring all over his body. There was a kick of mayonnaise in there: he knew that would go right to his thighs and his hips. He swallowed the bite and held there for a moment before he pointed at his mouth for more bites.  
Lars ate the whole sandwich and at that point, he was stuffed. He closed his eyes as he rolled his head over to the side. He groaned inside of his throat as the warmth spread throughout his body from the pit of his stomach. He felt her hand on the back of his head to lift it off of the bed for a second: she stuck something soft there. A pillow!  
“Are you comfy?” she asked him in a gentle voice.  
His lips parted so as to show her his teeth and then his tongue; he breathed out the softest, lightest moan. His stomach had expanded to its fullest extent; he was full to the absolute brim and the feeling reminded him of when he ate that whole red velvet cake for her. He could feel the skin on his belly had stretched so taut that he swore his belly button was going to turn itself inside out if he breathed too hard. But he was full, stuffed full of all the sweetest and warmest of love in the world.  
“—never so much better—fuck—I have missed this—”  
The loving touch of her hand sent shivers across his skin and around his sides to his spine. He kept his mouth open to breathe and to make all the little sounds she loved. But the feeling itself made him weak: all of the muscles in his feet and his ankles loosened up at the first of her touches, and his whole entire back relaxed under the full feeling taking over his entire belly.  
“Ohhhh—I feel so—so—” He felt the words escaping him as the packed full feeling morphed into drowsiness. He tried to stay awake to finish the thought. “—so—so big.”  
“You really are not that big, though,” she pointed out; her voice drifted further and further away to where she sounded as though she stood about a mile down a tunnel, even though she was right there next to his head.  
“I—I—I am—soft—” was all he could say.  
“So very soft,” her whisper drifted in from somewhere far away and yet so close. He felt the light caress of her lips on the silky skin around his belly button and he relaxed even more. Another moan left his throat as she planted more kisses on his belly, and then another soft one as she crawled up next to him on the bed. She kissed his neck and ran a hand along the pit in his chest. He felt big and swollen, but he felt good: all the food inside of him meant she loved him and felt willing to take care of him. He was about to let it all sit inside of him for some time so it could go straight to every corner of his body.  
The last thing he remembered before dozing off was her tickling his right nipple and his thinking to make that ring there happen.


	69. Chapter 69

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I'm gonna hit you so hard that when you wake up your clothes will be out of style.”  
> -16 year old Josh Brolin

Lars awoke the next morning laying flat on his back and with his head on the foot of the bed. At some point during the night, he had moved himself down towards Mia's feet: when he rolled over onto his side and then stuck out his tongue, he touched the curvature of her ankle. She giggled in her throat but she never awoke from her slumber.  
He opened his eyes to look at the spindly shape of her lower legs, at the fine bones making up her ankles, and at the arches underneath her feet. He wondered how she was able to stand upon her feet all day at bakery and then a hair salon, and have her legs maintain such a lovely shape. Another thought followed suit, in that her thigh high boots with the high heels made her uncomfortable after some time. As much as he loved the thigh high boots, he wondered if they were hurting her and if those brand new Chucks she had sufficed for her.  
He sighed through his nose as he dropped a hand to his bare belly. Once again, he had put on a little more weight overnight as he felt his waist poking out a slight bit more. His skin had softened to where it felt as though he was touching Egyptian cotton, and the rolls over his hips had filled out even more while softening even more than ever. She had fed him well the day before, with all the lunch, and that good sized dinner, and then all of that dessert with that nice wine, and Kirk grinned like a harlequin the whole entire time.  
He returned onto his back and she coughed followed by a soft “—ow—”  
Lars lifted his head to examine her body there, laying on her side facing him under the covers, but he couldn't see her face. He cleared his throat and pushed the blankets off of his head just in time to see her rubbing her eyes.  
“Darling? Skat? Are you awake?” he croaked. She groaned inside of her throat and gave her eyes another rub before taking a glimpse down at him.  
“Yeah—I have been awake,” she confessed, “I kept getting too cold and you kept kicking me in the face.”  
“By the way, how the hell did I end up down here?”  
“That's the thing: I don't know. It's like we stuffed our faces with goose berry pie and that red sherry, and we all rolled into bed. The only thing I remember after our dinner last night is you hugging my legs and sticking part of your foot into my mouth. That was—four o'clock?”  
“What time is it now?”  
She rolled over to face the nightstand: all he could see was the crown of her head and part of her forehead, while the covers obscured the rest of her face and neck.  
“It's—It's—eight twenty.”  
“Okay,” he breathed out, momentarily closing his eyes before sitting upright, “okay—okay—!”  
He lifted himself up without using his hands, and then slouched over the bottom hem of the comforter in front of him. He lay his arms over the top of the comforter and gazed on at her from the foot of the bed until she sat up herself. She brought herself face to face with him there in bed: their bodies faced opposite direction, but they stared right into each other's waking faces. That warm aroma of coffee floated in from downstairs.  
“Would you like some coffee, papacito?” she offered him.  
“I was actually going to offer you some tea, but I will gladly take a cup of coffee, skat,” he told her in a single breath.  
She reached up to both sides of his head and ran her fingers through his hair a few times before kissing him on the forehead. She climbed out of bed, with nothing but her panties on over her hips. Lars watched her put on her bra when she motioned for him to face the other way.  
“Oh, for God's sake, I have seen your naked ass,” he scoffed, “and your cunt. I drank your cunt liqueur, too.”  
“Yeah, my ass and my cunt, but my boobs, though?”  
“Your boobs, too. I have read your booby diaries and your booty diaries. I have seen you and you have seen my det tabte paradis. It just only seems fair.”  
“Yes, but you haven't seen me sit on the porcelain throne, though,” she pointed out, hooking her bra at the back.  
“True. You also haven't seen me stick out my dick and take the piss out of myself, either.”  
Mia ran her hands through her hair before reaching for a bright red sweat shirt out from her overnight bag there on the floor.  
“Speaking of dicks,” she began, sliding it over her head, “can you actually still see yours?”  
“You mean—?”  
“Yes.”  
He threw off the covers and slid out of bed: goose pimples covered his skin as he set his feet upon the cold carpet underneath him. But he glanced down to see the soft pooch upon the lower part of his bare belly and half of his feet. He then turned to her right as she slipped on her jeans.  
“Amuse me,” he commanded.  
“I'm going to absolutely stuff your face tonight when we get to Astoria and then we're going to have hot, nasty sex under the stars,” she told him, “I am going strip down to my underwear and then I am going to strip you down to your naked ass. I am going to stand over you and make you ogle my body while I reach down into the front of my panties and touch myself right in front of you. And then, when I am wet as the Columbia, I am going to get down on my hands and knees and hang over your body, but I will not touch you. I will make sure you are sweating and panting as if you had just run a marathon before I demand to you who's your mama—no! Who's your whore. Who's your whore, papacito? I will make sure you are shouting 'give it to me!' in a squeaky voice before I sit down upon your face and make the both of us come at the same time.”  
Lars stared at her with his mouth agape and his bottom lip twitching for a moment before he took a look down. He felt his shaft firm up and tighten with his thundering heartbeat before it started rising up: from underneath his belly, he saw his tip jutting out a bit from in between his legs. His chest rising and falling a bit, he turned to her again.  
“I don't know,” he answered, “you tell me.”  
“Put that away—I'm not taking that just yet.” She wagged her finger at him and then tossed her hair back from her shoulders. She strode towards him for a kiss on his lips before she headed out of the room. Lars let out a loud sigh and rubbed his eyes and his face before taking another look down at himself.  
“What to wear today…” he wondered aloud as he crossed his legs to ease his erection.

After their cups of coffee and quick bites from light toasted bagels with dribblings of butter on top, Lars and Mia loaded up the car and hugged Marcia, Sonia, and Kirk farewell for the weekend within the hour; she told him she wanted to arrive in Astoria while the winds entering through the mouth of the Columbia were still gentle.  
“That's my one problem with Astoria,” she confessed, buckling into her seat, “spring time is on its way so it's going to get rather windy real soon there. That's why I suggested this weekend and not the next one: it's one of those rare pockets during the year where it's not so bad.”  
“I also have to leave next weekend, too,” he pointed out, tossing his hair back from his face.  
“You and Kirk have to leave, too, right!”  
The car fired up to life and they pulled away from the curb, and headed for the freeway on the northwestern side of town. Mia peered out the windshield for the signs pointing to the exit for the Columbia River Highway, and took the third one on the left hand side.  
“We could take the 95, but that goes over the mountains and it's a little bit snowy up there right now,” she clarified.  
“Not really the best car for that.” Lars hunkered down in the passenger seat with his hands tucked in between his legs to keep his fingers warm. He was eager to see the Columbia River to his right and this little town nestled on the farthest corner of Oregon. He kept his arms pressed against his body as Mia switched on the heater and ran a hand through her hair again.  
“Marcia reminded me of this exquisite all you can eat buffet over there,” she told him.  
“So if and when we walk into there, should I pig out 'til I get the two of us kicked out?”  
She burst out laughing at that, but he felt that itch inside of him. That itch to eat as much as he possibly could, filling up every inch of his plate of everything they had on display. He needed those ten pounds, after all.  
They passed through a small, quaint neighborhood, and then, on either side of them stood the vast, lush dark green forest, dripping wet with fresh rain water and moisture left behind from frozen fog the night before. He licked his lips at the sight of all the fledgling grasses on the forest floor: soon, that grass would grow to be bright bold green, and wild flowers would be sure to follow soon thereafter. The thought of everything blooming and blossoming within a matter of days tickled his hip bones. Splotches of rain fell upon the windshield and Mia responded with the wipers.  
At one point the trees broke and Lars was face to face with the guard rail: beyond the rail, with its grim black and gray waters flowing forth over stones and a deep river bed towards the ocean was the Columbia River. On the far side of the river was even more forest, indicating they were to kiss the state line for at least the next seventy miles. He thought about reaching the beach and standing there with his shirt up again to feel the winds upon his skin. He raised a knee to the glove box as he lowered himself even further into his seat. He leaned his head back against the seat as he watched the river waters drop beneath the edge of a slight canyon.  
“I didn't bring anything to eat with us,” she confessed as the road turned back into the trees for a few hundred yards and then returning to skirt the edge of the river again.  
“We pretty much ate everything last night anyways, I would think,” he noted, raising his eyebrows and cracking a devilish grin at her. She shrugged with a light giggle.  
“I wouldn't say 'everything', but—we sure did well last night, though. I should also tell you: the place we are staying in is a yurt, about five hundred yards from the water. Because I know you are the merman after all.”  
His face lit up with glee.  
“Oh, yes!”  
Even though she was driving, he threw his arms around her and kissed her on the neck. She chuckled as she gripped onto his arm with her left hand and kept her right hand on the steering wheel. Lars leaned the side of his head against her shoulder and gazed out the windshield for most of the trip: the gray waters beneath the steep, cold cliffs and the thick evergreen trees pointing up to the rainy sky overhead. About twenty miles outside of town, he lifted his head and ran his fingers through his bangs; his head spun a bit from keeping his head there while they went around corners and gentle curves, following the escarpment over the Columbia River all the way, and his stomach turned from hunger. He rested his hands on the top of his belly as they passed a small wooden shack on the side of the road. There was a sign over the doorway decreeing “fresh beef jerky and other meats.” He couldn't see what else they had once they passed by, but perhaps she did.  
“Did you see the tongue they had in there?” she asked him.  
“The what?”  
“The tongue. They had jerky and they had tongue.”  
“No, I didn't. But, you know I do like—a little tongue.” He leaned into her face to take in the soft clean smell upon her hair; he was about to touch the side of her face with the tip of his tongue but she pushed him back with her right hand.  
“Stop, I'm driving!” she declared as they pressed onward.  
At one point, the trees cleared and through the rain, they made out the low dark rooftops interspersed by tall scraggly dark oak trees, all of which made up the neighborhoods of Astoria. Mia slowed down so they could better see the town, and where she was going through the dense rain. She kicked the windshield wipers up to full speed, but it wasn't enough to ward off the rivulets shedding off of the roof and onto the hood.  
“Shit—I can't see,” she grunted. Meanwhile, Lars' stomach writhed in agony with hunger. He should have eaten more than that bagel before they left the Bennetts' house: it simply was not enough to tithe him over until they checked into their campground. What should have been an innocuous grumble felt like a stab from a knife point. He set his hands on the top of his belly but the pangs spread down towards his waist; he placed his forearms upon his belly and grimaced.  
“Are you okay?” she asked him in a gentle voice.  
“No—it's my stomach. Remember, if I get really hungry, I almost feel sick.”  
“Okay, hang on, hang on—I've got you—I've got you, baby—”  
He bowed his head and closed his eyes. The slow jerking movements from the car against the torrential rain only made the pains in his stomach and his head worse: it felt as though his head was about to spin right off of his neck. Mia squinted through the sheets of rain upon the windshield and before the car, and then she eased on the brakes again before turning right. Lars closed his eyes and lay the back of his head upon the back of the seat.  
“I'll ask them in here if they've got like whole milk or something,” she told him as the car turned a few times and then bounded over something. “Get some good fat into your beautiful belly. We have got to check in at the campground—stat, because this rain is—fucking insane.”  
“Okay,” he grunted out and the pain inside of his stomach came back again like a wave; he grimaced and gritted his teeth. He bowed his head again and felt his hair fall upon his face. The car stopped and she turned off the engine: the rain pummeled upon the roof in a deafening roar. Indeed, the rain was so loud, he could scarcely hear Mia climb out of the car and close the door.  
Lars lifted his head again and never took his hands off of himself. The pain crested to where he believed he would throw up, but if he held still, it subsided for a brief time. It was that point when he opened his eyes and watched the sheets of rain cascading over the windshield of the car. He blinked several times, wary of lifting his hands up in order to rub his eyes.  
“Focking hell,” he breathed out at the sight; a rather hard pang seared right through his belly and that was enough to coil his whole body.  
“Focking HELL!” he screeched, his voice breaking and echoing over the car. Every minute felt like an hour, especially when he thought about the bagel and the cup of coffee he had had earlier. He tried to talk himself out of it, but he knew he didn't feel good. But when he considered opening the door, the driver's side door flung open. Mia climbed into the seat, with her hair drenched and dripping wet with rain water. She held a glass bottle of creamy white whole milk, the most beautiful thing in the world to him at that moment. She shut the door behind her and struggled to unscrew the silver lid from the top as her hands were soaking wet.  
“Oh—!” he declared, taking the bottle. “Gimme! Gimme gimme gimme gimme!”  
The lid popped off and he tipped the bottle to his mouth. The cold, heavy milk coated his mouth and his throat, and greeted his angry stomach. The pains faded as the heaviness and the softness of the milk soothed him from the inside. He downed about half of it in three large gulps before he put it down on his knee.  
“Oh—Oh, God. That's better. I can't say how many times that's happened before—”  
“Get so hungry it makes you sick?”  
“Yeah. Gah—fuck me.”  
“Okay.” She flashed him a grin as she picked up the keys.  
“No! Not here!” he cried out and she burst out laughing. She fired up the car again and she backed out of the spot to return to the road.  
“While I was in there, I started thinking about—something that will help you gain more weight,” she began, peeking through the sheets of rain upon the plexiglas before them.  
“And what's that?” he asked after taking another drink.  
“Heavy cream. It'll fill you up better and give you those ten pounds, too. It's full of good things, too, to keep you nourished and gorgeous… Hopefully, tonight, when we go to the buffet, they'll have some.”  
“And if they don't?”  
“Look around for some.” She flashed him a wink. Soon they pulled into a small campground of tiny wooden yurts, round cabins with pointed dark green roofs with skylight windows on top. She parked the car before the building at the front to check in for the weekend. Lars remained there in the passenger seat and drank down the rest of the whole milk. It soothed his stomach from the inside but he knew he had to eat something else to feel better. He thought about all the food the buffet could have waiting for them, but he also tried to talk himself out of it as the thought of that could undo everything the milk did for him. He ran a hand through his hair again, bone dry and light compared to the saturated, soggy campground outside.  
Once Mia climbed back into the car, she looked as though she had taken a shower: her bangs hung over her face in slender waves while the rest of her hair matted down against her neck and shoulders and wet her back and the seat behind her. One lock above her temple dripped water down upon her shoulder: the droplets followed the curl of her hair before they dripped down onto the shoulder of her coat.  
“We are number fifteen,” she told him as she parked them into the space before the green door. “Ah, shit.”  
“What's the matter?”  
“There's no awning over the porch.”  
Lars peered through the sheets of rain on the windshield to find that sure enough, a low railing lined the three front steps and the narrow exposed porch. He nibbled on his bottom lip before smacking both together.  
“I need to get wet anyways,” he pointed out, unbuckling his seat belt. He climbed out to the cold rain, which poured over his head and shoulders, followed by his hands, including the one which held the empty glass bottle, and then his whole body. Within seconds, his bangs pressed against his forehead and his eyes filled with rain water; he could feel his shirt sticking to his body and his coat soaking from the shoulders down. Over the roar of the rain, he could hear Mia laughing behind him on the other side of the car. He whirled around to face her as water trickled down the side of his neck and into the inside of his shirt.  
He shut the door right as she said something to him.  
“Huh?” he shouted, rubbing his eyes and pushing his bangs off of his brow with his free hand; he halted right in front of her.  
“Come here and make me feel like a woman!” she declared. They were soaking wet but that did not stop either of them. He planted his lips onto hers and her hands slipped underneath his coat: he could feel her struggling to peel up his shirt. Her hands gripped onto his hips, and then onto his soft plush love handles. She breathed into his face as her eyes locked onto his; he stared right into her face to take his mind off of the rain all around them.  
“This is intense,” he remarked, cracking a smile to her.  
“I agree—and I don't know if it'll bring us closer together.”  
“It will. Trust me. We've entwined ourselves—inside of beds and other places—just—stay close to me and—the luscious truffles on my hips and—my belly—I've got you, don't worry.”  
He blinked several times right as two people walked up to them. The one on the left huddled up next to the one on the right; the one on the right held an umbrella over them. Even with water in his eyes, he knew that long blond hair anywhere.  
“HEY, YOU GUYS!” he declared; Mia turned around to see James and Ashley approaching them, the latter of whom cackled at the sight of them.  
“Hey, you guys are getting all wet!” he bellowed, chuckling.  
“Really? We haven't noticed!” Lars retorted.  
“Come on, we'll help you both—” Ashley shouted. Mia gave Lars another kiss before turning to the trunk of the car for their overnight bags.


	70. Chapter 70

“Just hang it up next to the window here, babe. And I'll put that garbage pail beneath it so it won't get the floor all wet.”  
Lars slung the collar of his drenched shirt upon a metal hook on the wall next to the window. It was difficult to remove his shirt because the rain had soaked through the entire upper part of his coat: the fabric left behind a slimy feeling upon his skin. His soaking wet hair weighed down on his back and on his neck, and the rain water in his bangs dripped down into his eyes and his cheek bones; he rubbed his eyes before he hung it up on the wall and then pushed a piece of his hair off his shoulder with his Deep Purple pendant jingling upon its chain. He then turned to her right as she sidled towards him with the white trash can in her hand.  
The inside of the yurt was more than spacious enough for both him and Mia: they suggested to James and Ashley to join in with them, but she told them they needed to meet up with a guy they had met in Seattle two weeks before.  
“His name's Dale,” Ashley had told them, pushing a lock of dyed blue hair behind her ear before tugging her hood back over her head. “You might have seen him? He plays drums for a band called the Melvins.”  
“Oh, the Melvins!” Mia declared, wrapping her hair up in a clean towel from the closet next to the electric stove on the far side of the yurt. “Really? What's he doing down here?”  
“No clue. But he invited us to a bit of lunch here in town, though.”  
At the moment, Lars was more concerned with drying off his body and his hair than he thought about meeting up with this guy Dale. He pushed a few wet strands of hair off of his forehead before he rubbed a few remaining droplets out of his eyes and his eyebrows. The whole milk he had had earlier still managed to coat the hunger pangs inside of his stomach, but he craved something more. He needed to set foot in that buffet.  
He turned around to face Mia again, only to find a triad of deep looking, scabbed slits gaping at him from the middle of her back: they rode right over the vertebrae of her spine, a threesome of wounds set at an angle, as if she was slashed by a creature at some point. The sight of them made his scalp itch, but he could only imagine what they felt like to her.  
“What the—” he sputtered.  
“What?” She turned to face him and the mortified expression on his face.  
“What the fuck happened there?”  
She swallowed and then she reached up behind her back to finger them, and then she grimaced at the feel of them.  
“I tripped.”  
“Again?”  
“Yeah. Well, see—I was wearing my boots this time, and there was a cork screw on the counter top in the bakery. Marcia had taken it out of a grinder, and then I—I lost my balance—and ran my back right over the sharp edges of the cork screw. Yeah, it hurt.”  
Lars clasped his hands to his mouth as his stomach turned.  
“Had to get a—a tetanus shot and everything. That was a few days before Valentine's Day, too—right before I called you.”  
He brought one hand to his chest, and then lifted his other one off of his mouth.  
“So that's been there—” he started.  
“Two weeks, yes. But it stopped hurting a week ago, though. I assure you it is healing up just fine. Anyways, there is another towel in the closet there. Let's get dressed—I am sure you are hungry.”

Within time, the two of them had massaged the rain water off from their skin with the clean towels and changed into some drier clothes—Lars put on a button up shirt as he had promised her before. And at that point, the rain had subsided a great deal, down to a steady drizzle. But they ducked their heads before heading back to the car and climbing into the dry interior.  
“Crazy,” Lars breathed out upon closing the door.  
“I know, right?” Mia reached behind her for the other part of the buckle. “And we thought the rain in Newport was nuts. Anyways—let us check out this place here for a little bit of lunch.”  
“We do dinner and breakfast but then back to lunch,” he noted as she started up the car again. She turned down the windshield wipers to the lowest setting before they backed out to the puddles covering the narrow street taking them back out to the street. Lars peeked out his window to the gray sky overhead, and the heavy dense clouds which beheld more rain than earlier. He thought of soup, hot chicken and rice soup straight off of the oven top with a bit of sea salt and black pepper, and several accompanying oyster crackers on the side; he also thought of a nice hot grilled cheese sandwich to balance out his bowl of soup. He wondered about any sort of pastries there on the other side of the buffet line as he lifted his elbow up next to the window and pushed his bangs off of his brow again before resting the side of his head against the backs of his knuckles.  
The feel of her hand on his knee brought the return of butterflies in his stomach, but they were soon followed up by that pain once again. He could feel the whole milk wearing off as the muscles in his stomach pulsated and began to ache, but this time the pain never grew as intense as earlier; he still thought of it as being poked a little too hard in the belly as she brought them to the stoplight.  
“So this place really is all you can eat?” he asked her.  
“All—you can eat,” she answered, kicking the windshield wipers up a notch. “So you'd better be hungry.”  
“And I am, honey pie. I am thinking of taking a little bit of everything in there.”  
“My goodness. What will people think, though?”  
“I don't give a flying fuck. I'm hungry.”  
“What if they run out of food before you have seconds?”  
“I will chase something down and kill it.”  
“With what?” she chuckled at that.  
“My hands. Maybe a knife, too.”  
Mia clasped a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh as the light turned green and they pulled forward for another two blocks before they reached the restaurant. At the very sight of it, Lars could feel his stomach preparing to growl at him. He thought of all of the food she had given him from the time they had sparked their relationship, and then he thought of the upcoming tour. Those ten more pounds felt so elusive and yet so close. He thought of all the times she held food before his face, including chorizo—oh, chorizo! He hoped they had some underneath the glass in there.  
But the delighted expression on her face as she fed him, piece by piece, spoonful by spoonful, or the times she encouraged to gorge a little more, namely beginning with that red velvet cake around Kirk's birthday. To eat was to love for him, and he felt all of the love in the world right then. He squirmed in his seat as they made a splash in the river in the storm drain before reaching the driveway.  
He could feel the hunger creeping inside of him, never making a noise, but he did feel it boring a hole there in the pit of his stomach, a deep gnawing sensation that dug deep inside of him. He was about to wake the complete monster that resided in the deepest part of his belly, the one that he knew would make him swell and bloat up more than he could ever imagine, that is if he devoured enough. And if he had to eat the whole restaurant to knock the chip off of his shoulder, then he would have to do such a thing.  
Once they chose a spot near the glass front door, Lars flashed her mischievous smirk. She took the keys out of the ignition and stuck them back into her purse.  
“Eat,” she whispered into his face, “until you are big and bulging—and sexier and even more gorgeous than I can ever possibly imagine.” The way she said “gorgeous” sent a shiver down his spine: he was about to make a complete glut of himself.  
Inside of the restaurant stood a series of heavy oak tables and accompanying chairs, and a couple of booths near the windows peering out to the mouth of the Columbia. But there, in the middle of the large bright room, stood the buffet underneath the glass display.  
Lars almost felt like the mouth of the Columbia at the sight of all of the lush green vegetables, colored vegetables, sliced fresh fruit, fresh berries, potatoes au gratin, mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, steaks of Atlantic salmon and swordfish, pieces of blackened chicken, roasted chicken, dinner rolls, all manner of cheeses, half a dozen vats of soup with ladles, followed by small cakes, several assortment of cookies, fresh pies, and different colored Jello all at the far end.  
“Yep, I am going to get fat,” he muttered under his breath, gazing on at the pile of plump bright red raspberries before him. “Really, really, really fat—like—I think I will have to switch to sweat pants for a bit after this. Just… look at those—those—those berries!”  
Her hand gripped onto the left cheek on his butt and he nibbled on his bottom lip and curled his toes inside of his black boots.  
“I know you're hungry,” she whispered into his ear. “Absolutely starving—you were in pain not long ago after all. And it's only seven bucks so—have at it, chico hermoso.”  
“I was indeed in pain,” he retorted, feeling his hips tingle at those last two words. “It made me a little bit sick.”  
“So—grab a plate and eat up, my little piggy. Or I will feed you. I will sit on your chest and hand feed you until your belly swells up like a balloon.”  
“Remember how you've said fuck being good before?” he asked her as he reached for one of the clean white plates at the closest end.  
“Of course,” she replied, following his lead.  
“Good boys eat and get fatter,” he pointed out, taking the plastic tongs out of the container with the fresh salad first. “Feeling very hungry and little randy—sluttonous, as we say.”  
He piled his plate with one of everything, excepting the soup: he would take a bowl of that last after cleaning his plate the first time.  
She led him to the table right next to the desserts and, prior to sitting down, he unfastened his jeans when no one was looking.  
The vegetables were crisp, nourishing the inside of his mouth and his throat with each crunch under the light drizzle of Italian dressing. The melon and berries never tasted so fresh and tangy: the raspberries made the back of his jaw tingle with tartness. The blackened chicken had a light kick of black pepper, while the roasted chicken had a little twist of lemon upon its crispy skin. The kick of the Roquefort cheese combined with the bite of the Gorgonzola and the freshness of the mozzarella; the lightness of the rolls; the silkiness of the salmon. But his favorite thing was the mashed potatoes, with the top part hollowed out to carry the smooth full flavored gravy: it reminded him of eating dinner at his grandparents' house on a cold winter night in Copenhagen. Once he finished the potatoes au gratin, he wiped his mouth with the napkin next to him and flashed Mia a smile.  
He leaned back in his chair with one hand on top of his stomach; he pulled his shirt up to expose the small triangle formed by the edges of his shirt underneath the bottom button. She kept her elbow on the table so as to hold her fork next to her face; she smiled at the triangle shaped sliver of soft skin showing back at her. She sloughed off a sliver of swordfish and inserted it into her mouth; she bowed her head so as to gaze on at him from under her brow and the edges of her bangs.  
“Get that belly nice and full—and sexy—baby boy,” she whispered. “I'm getting turned on just looking at you.” He raised an eyebrow at her at the sound of that. He kept his hand there, feeling the warmth radiating out of his stomach before he reached for his water glass for a sip. Soon, he returned to the bar for seconds, picking out the same food as before, including a few extra raspberries which he popped into his mouth as if they were candy. He returned to his seat while popping a couple of little chocolate truffles into his mouth. Once he sat back down, Mia returned with seconds for herself, but she planted a soft little kiss on his cheek. He blinked several times at her in surprise.  
“What was that for?” he asked with his mouth full of chocolate as she took her seat again.  
“Because you're cute. So very cute.”  
He finished out his seconds and waited a moment before he returned for a small bowl of chicken and rice soup, with those little oyster crackers that he had imagined. It wasn't until he took his first bite of fresh chicken when his stomach started to bloat out from underneath his shirt. Every bite was a bit more swell further out from his body. And then he tipped the bowl to his mouth to drink up the broth. He leaned back in his chair to touch himself with the palm of his hand: he was getting full but he was nowhere near what either of them wanted. She fluttered her eyelashes at him and he knew he had dessert next.  
He took a slice of devil's food cake, a large slice of blueberry pie, a handful of cookies, and a small metal bowl of fiery red cherry Jello, as well as a few more truffles. He stuck the cookies one by one into his mouth and then dug into the cake. Mia stood up for a couple of those big blocks of chocolate ice cream, but he stayed in place to eat up the lush cake: even with his jeans undone, he could feel the bottom of his belly pushing on the top of his jeans. The monster was waking up. By the time he started on the pie, his belly began to feel large and heavy, weighing him down and feeling so much rounder than it had ever been in his life. But he wasn't done yet.  
He moved at a slow, almost snail's pace, upon eating his Jello with whipped cream on top. He gazed into her eyes as she returned the favor, keeping her chin inside of her palm as she watched him. He thought of the round of love making soon after, if it would be in the yurt, on the floor, or on that comfortable looking sofa, or on that big bed pressed against the wall. He thought of her hands holding him, and he itched for her sweet caress upon him again as he stuck the last bite into his mouth.  
Lars gazed on at her from across the table once he swallowed it down. He could feel her undressing him, even just by sitting there two feet in front of him. He knew she wanted it, and he wanted it for himself.  
“Getting full?” she asked him in a voice loud enough for him to hear over the chatter in the restaurant. He licked his bottom lip, and he still tasted the cherry on his skin. Cherry, which reminded him of her lips, the lips staring back at him ready to kiss him; the lips of her clit which lay hidden underneath the table. It was dangerous to feel so much bigger on the inside but she was willing to do it for him. He held up two fingers to her.  
“Two more of those cookies please,” he commanded. “The double chocolate ones.” She raised her eyebrows as she ran the tip of her tongue along the edges of her top teeth.  
“Would you like me to feed them to you?”  
“Behage,” he breathed out. She climbed to her feet with a twinkle in her eye and fetched two rich looking chocolate cookies with chunks of chocolate embedded within. He leaned back in his chair; the buttons on his shirt hugged his chest and his belly, but not to where he thought one could pop off of his body at any given moment. She stuck the first one onto his tongue and he chewed it with his mouth closed; soon he swallowed and the full feeling only grew bigger. She fed him the last one and followed it up with a kiss on his lips.  
“You did so well,” Mia whispered over the noise around them. He swallowed and the full feeling had grown so large and so monolithic that he thought he couldn't stand up if she asked him.  
“Come on, baby—I'll give you a nice sensual rub when we get back—” She sashayed away to pay the seven dollar bill plus three more for their glasses of water. Meanwhile, he remained there with his flesh pressing against the buttons of his shirt and his hands upon his belly. He swore he gained about five pounds by merely sitting there at the table. He felt so big even though he had a soft, still slightly round curve running from the bottom of his chest to the top of his hips. Ah, those hips. They cradled the heavy load that weighed down inside his entire belly; maybe that was how she felt when she stuffed herself silly.  
Mia returned with her purse over her shoulder and then slung her coat around her body before giving him a hand.  
Lars giggled as he staggered onto his feet. She clasped onto his shoulders to hold him steady and he bowed his head in a fit of soft laughter. If one looked inside, they would swear he was drunk, even though he hadn't had a sip of vodka in weeks. She led him back out to the rain with one arm around his lower back. His legs felt like heavy lead poles as he staggered back to the car. He kept one hand on his belly and the other on the door handle: it dripped wet with rain water but he didn't care. Once she unlocked it, he threw the door open and collapsed into the front seat without another word.  
“Shit—I'm trouble—” he grunted out as she stuck her purse on the floor under the steering wheel. He held onto the bottom button of his shirt and unfastened it, followed by the one above that and the third one and the fourth one until he released his belly. He fumbled the paddle on the side of the seat to lean back but his fingers kept slipping from the rain water.  
“Hang on—” she told him, ducking out from the driver's side and rounding the hood to his side. She opened the door to help him adjust the seat. “—hang on—”  
The paddle made a loud thunk and he jerked back to a near flat recline.  
“Ah—oh! Oh, fock—fock—focking—focking hell—focking HELL, I have never—” He hiccuped before burping in his throat and he brought a hand to his mouth to pardon himself. “—mmm, I have never—eaten so much. Fucking shit—”  
She leaned closer to his face; the heat of her breath up against his face made his thighs press closer together.  
“I am so moist right now,” she whispered into his ear. Her soft smooth lips pressed on his mouth, and for a brief moment, he thought of throwing his arms around her and yanking closer to him to make love with her right there in the front seat of her car, but he was too full to do anything more than recline back and digest everything.  
“When the rain clears out, let's go out to the trees and make love,” she suggested, keeping her voice in an airy whisper.  
“And—And—And, and, and, and, and, and, and—when?” was all he could stammer out.  
“Later on today, papacito,” she breathed into his ear before holding onto the other side of his face before giving him another kiss. “I also want to make you dinner. Lots of dinner.”  
“We have—have—have—have—we have entered—mmm, forbidden—forbidden—territory, skat—”  
“Indeed we have.” She kissed him before letting go of his mouth and closing the door.


	71. Chapter 71

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “There is a balance between two worlds,  
> one with an arrow and a cross.  
> Regardless of the balance life has become  
> cumbersome.”  
> -”Cumbersome”, Seven Mary Three

Lars clasped onto the edges of the seat to keep him in place. He licked his lips every time Mia took a glimpse over at him and his belly poking out at her; it was like carrying a large bowl of unadulterated gelatin, or a heavy twelve pound turkey upon his body. Every turn around a corner felt as though he would roll right off of the seat and onto the center console or up against the door.  
He had overdone it for real this time, even though he still had a mere soft round bump upon the middle of his body. He was stuffed, more than stuffed, and had awakened the famished beast inside of him and all he wanted was to lay down on the couch there in the yurt and nap it off with her snuggled right next to him. But at the same time, a voice in the back of his mind said he did it too much. He made a complete pig of himself in that restaurant before all of those people. But then he pictured her giving him a soft poke followed by a gentle rub of his belly while she kissed him on the neck. He closed his eyes and thought of her lips on the rim of his belly button. The whole thought of it forced his tongue out of his mouth and all along his lips; or perhaps he was merely thirsty. He was surrounded by water everywhere, and not a single drop to drink after all.  
They pulled up to a stoplight and she turned to him with a smile on her face. He lifted one hand and placed the back of it upon his forehead.  
“Sexy boy,” she said in a husky voice; she lay one hand on his belly for a light little rub right on the spot over his belly button. The touch of her hand and the tips of her fingers there sent a wave of goose pimples over his skin. His thighs relaxed and his toes curled inside of his shoes. If only she knew how much it made him feel so good on the inside, right there in the pit of his stomach and all over his belly and down to his genitals.  
“Very sexy boy—so chubby,” she continued, keeping her voice in that husky tone as the light turned green. He shifted his weight in his seat to make himself more comfortable against the swaying movements of the car but the heavy feeling inside of his stomach kept him firm right in his place there in the passenger seat. He shoved his butt into the pivoted part of the seat and he arched the lower part of his back. That was it! Now that heavy feeling radiated warmth all over his body and he relaxed under the weight inside of his belly. He lifted his hands off of the edges of the seat to lay the backs of both upon his forehead again. He kept his back arched as he closed his eyes and showed his body to her.  
The cold air in the car made his nipples stand on point and the thought of her touching him again brought another firm, full feeling to him. He shifted his hips a bit to make himself a little more comfortable and also to grab her attention.  
They rolled back into the campground and, once he felt the car return to its parking spot before their yurt, he opened his eyes to see her unfastening her seatbelt while keeping her gaze fixed upon him.  
“You wanna see my peacock?” he offered in a broken voice, never dropping his hands down from his forehead.  
“Only if you want to see my lotus,” she retorted; he flashed her a smirk, and he could feel his cheek bones filling out even more as the blood rushed to his head. She ran her tongue along the top part of her bottom lip as she leaned over him to touch him.  
“Look at this sexy belly—” She ran her fingers along the slight curvature running from the base of his chest down to the very tip top of his jeans. “—and this beautiful body. Let's go inside.”  
He lifted a finger to point at the roof.  
“Hey, check it out,” he said. She lifted her gaze to the roof and then the windshield. Drops of rain remained on the other side of the glass but no more followed. Her face lit up.  
“It stopped!” she declared.  
“Can't wait to be a mountain man for a couple of hours. Or several.” Lars held out his arms in an attempt to sit upright but he was far too weighed down. “Could you—” He hiccuped. “—mmm, pardon me. Could you be a darling and—help me out, please?”  
“Of course, baby.”  
Mia climbed out of the car and shut the door behind her; she rounded the hood to the passenger side of the car, opened the door, and hung over his face and his body. She kissed the tip of his nose before giving his belly another light caress.  
“So stuffed and I am in need of some tender love,” he groaned.  
“Come on, baby—”  
She slid her hand underneath his shoulder blades and lifted him off of the seat; she groaned and struggled to pick him up, and so to help her, he grunted as he slid his legs out from beneath the glove box and onto the wet pavement outside. He kept his spine straight because the feeling proved to be too much against the bottom of his rib cage: he almost lost his balance upon standing onto his feet. He was too much, even as she pressed her hand against his chest to steady him. He panted as she held onto him with one hand; she reached behind him to shut the door. He grinned at her; her touch there upon his chest added to the weak sensation in his knees and his hips. The whole middle of his body felt big, and most of all, warm and silky. He was like putty in her hands now.  
“Now, that is a full tummy,” she remarked, sliding her hand down to his belly. “Very, very full tummy. My goodness.”  
“Oof—I think I ate too much.”  
“Come on, baby, let's get you inside and out of those clothes—”  
She guided him onto the porch and to the front door; she reached into her pocket for the key to unlock the door. He thought his belly was going to blow out by the time she pushed open the door, and he staggered into the yurt, and collapsed right onto his back on the couch.  
“Oh fuck—fock—,” he groaned out, undoing the top button of his shirt so as to expose the whole upper part of his body. Even though he had a ways to go before he outgrew his clothes, doing without liberated him and let him further relax. He leaned his head upon the arm of the couch and opened his mouth to let out a soft moan. He closed his eyes and they kept wanting to remain closed upon his recline.  
“You know…” she started over the gentle sounds emerging from his throat. He licked his bottom lip and gazed up at her looming over his face with a smile; she had crouched down next to him. “I have been thinking. You should grow a beard again—you are so sexy with a little more hair.”  
He blinked several times to keep his eyelids open. “With more hair? So you want me to be Robin Williams?”  
She burst out laughing and then she ran the tips of her fingers along the round shape of his lower jaw, and down onto his neck to feel his soft skin. But he couldn't help but think about that for a moment.  
“Just a little more!” she insisted. “You know—all along right here. I love kissing your face and feeling all that rugged, rough hair on my lips.”  
She leaned into his face to kiss him on the mouth; her caress on his chest sent a light flurry of butterflies inside of his full stomach. He closed his eyes again to absorb all of the flavors on her lips, as if he needed to eat up any more flavors. He stuck out his tongue when she pulled back to look at him in the eye.  
“I like how,” he began, “—even the worst of circumstances won't stop you from loving me.”  
“Worst of circumstances?” she echoed, knitting her eyebrows.  
“Yeah.” He bowed his head to stifle a burp in his throat. “Sometimes I think of the bus again.”  
She raised her eyebrows at that before giving him another kiss. She stroked his bangs and then the side of his face.  
“Don't,” she pleaded in a light airy voice. “Don't, baby.”  
“I also don't feel like I'm enough for you, either,” he confessed, looking down at his bare chest. “My body is not erotic enough, like it's—too much for you to bear.”  
She ran her hands down the sides of his neck as she leaned in for several more kisses on his lips: each one made him weaker than the last one.  
“You are more than enough,” she whispered as he stifled another belch inside of his throat; that time, it bestowed a little relief on his stomach. “You are love. You are sensual and sexy… completely perfect. You are everything I could ever ask for. If your body is obscene, I want to be thrown into a prison.”  
She ran the tip of her index finger around the rim of his belly button and he pressed his knees together in response. She giggled at him.  
“Does that tickle?”  
“Like I'm having that part kissed.”  
He spoke too soon: she moved her head down to his belly button and planted a light feathery kiss there on the rim.  
“Press one for Danish,” she recalled.  
“Press one for Danish,” he echoed, and she stuck the tip of her tongue into his belly button and he could feel his shaft stiffen at the feeling.  
“Vil du komme i seng?” he asked her.  
“Come again?”  
“Want to get in bed?”  
Her face lit up at the sound of that and she held onto his hands to lift him up from the couch. The heavy feeling weighed him down to the cushions but he managed to climb back onto his feet.  
“I can't—I can't—” he pleaded, holding still in the middle of the floor before the front of the couch.  
“Can't what?”  
“Move. I'm too fucking full.”  
He clasped a hand to his belly as he staggered over to the queen sized bed with the white comforter on top tucked into the other side of the room. His shirt started to fall off of his body by the time he reached the edge of the bed and fell onto his back onto the comforter.  
“OOF! Ohhhh…” His legs hung over the side but he had tipped his head back so he showed her his neck, his collar bones, his whole chest, and his armpits; he parted his lips to form a triangle shape with his mouth. He felt his hair had spread out over the soft plush bundles inside of the comforter, and his bangs had fallen off of his forehead and towards the back of his head; meanwhile, his satiated belly protruded up from his body. He didn't look it, but he felt massive and round, perfect for such a pasty round face.  
“Speaking of sexy—” she started right in front him. He was about to lift his head to take a glimpse at her but he felt her climbing over his body; she loomed over his face with a grin upon her face.  
“You sure did make a little pig of yourself.”  
He wanted to say something but all he could think of at that moment was a soft moan from the inside of his throat. She eyed the hair over his head and then his face and his whole body underneath her. She stroked the dip in his chest and then his nipple: the latter made him wiggle his toes and sent a shiver down his spine towards his hips.  
“God—I have never been so much more attracted to you,” she confessed to him in a light whisper. “You are just—just—I want you. I want you!”  
She clasped her hands to the sides of his face and shoved her tongue into his mouth. He relaxed underneath her body for a second before his spine straightened and he tugged her down towards his chest: her tongue ran along his teeth and he shifted his weight beneath her from the feeling. He closed his eyes to sink inside of the feeling; the touch of her hand upon his belly sent his heart racing. A part of him still felt too big for her as her hands crept around his waist and onto his love handles: her fingers pulsing upon his flesh were enough to make him want to roll over onto his side and throw her onto her back. But he could only give himself to her there as she lifted her head to gaze at him right in the face with a look of lust in her eye.  
“You—You—Y-You wanna—go outside?” he suggested, breathing heavy.  
“After dinner, baby,” she breathed, leaning into his mouth. “Soon enough. But for now let's get all cuddly, chico hermoso.”  
He smirked at her; he wanted to dominate her, to make her beg for mercy at his whim, but she had him in the palm of her hand, all full and soft. But he had awakened the beast within and his horns were about to rise: he had to start somewhere on the bottom of the mountain.  
“Suck my balls, honey pie,” he whispered.  
“Only if you suck my lips, baby doll,” she retorted, winking at him and the smirk widened.  
“Ooh, I like that,” he remarked.  
“What, baby doll?”  
“Yeah.”  
“'Cause you are a doll—perfect to love and play with.” She kissed him again before she pushed herself off of his body to peel off his jeans. He licked his lips, and lay his head flat on the comforter, and braced himself.


	72. Chapter 72

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Follow me now and you will not regret  
> leaving the life you led before we met.  
> You are the first to have this love of mine,  
> forever with me 'till the end of time.”  
> -“N.I.B.”, Black Sabbath (my favorite Sabbath song next to Planet Caravan, too) - also I've got a new drinking game for you guys: take a shot every time Lars says "oof"

At some point Lars had fallen asleep after her blowjob to him, because he awoke to the warm smell of wine combined with garlic, onions, tomatoes, and some different kind of vegetables. He rubbed his left eye with the side of one hand, followed by his right eye. He groaned inside of his throat as he rolled his head over to look on at the foot of the bed. Mia stood before the stove on the other side of the yurt with her back turned to him. He groaned inside of his throat and rubbed his eyes again.  
“—oof—” he grunted out, lifting himself up onto his elbows; the full feeling inside of his stomach had faded away to a light, easy feeling. But now he had to run off to the bathrooms as soon as possible. She turned around, and her face lit up at the sight of him.  
“There he is!” she declared.  
“Ah—oh, what time is it?” he asked, his voice breaking.  
“A quarter to five. I was just about to wake you up so we could go out to the trees. All of the blankets and a couple of bowls and spoons are all loaded up—we just have to take ourselves and the food with us.”  
Lars sat upright, rubbing his eyes a third time. His head spun from laying flat on his back for so long, while the lower part of his back ached from the odd angle upon the bed for so long. He lay the soles of his feet flat upon the floor and the feeling inside of his stomach had all but fallen into the lower part of his belly. Nevertheless, he was hungry again, and he made it known as he strode towards her and squeeze the left cheek of her butt.  
“What is that? It smells… heavenly.”  
“Fricassee,” she replied. “Hearty, warm spicy chicken stew with lots of butter and olive oil, a splash of red wine, some raisins, a couple of bay leaves, a handful of cloves, minced garlic, sliced sautéed onions, sliced red bell pepper, half a jar of tomato sauce, some olives, some peas, and some carrots. You are just in time, too—the rice is nearly done.”  
She picked up the wooden spoon out of the pot with a bit of Spanish rice inside of the pivot and stuck it into his mouth for a tasting. The cumin hit him right square in the mouth while a light dusting of tomato sauce kissed him upon the pad of his tongue. The rice felt tender to the touch, and the warmth from all of the combined aromas from inside of the pot tickled his nose and coaxed a quiet rumble from the inside of his stomach.  
“I heard that,” she chuckled as he handed the spoon back to her. He lay his released hand upon his belly, which he could tell felt a bit softer, even through his shirt.  
“How do you feel, baby?” Mia asked him. He lifted his shirt to expose his belly and he tucked in the muscles right over his stomach to appear a little bit slimmer; she shook her head and wagged her finger.  
“No. No, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. Don't you dare suck in. Give it to me.”  
He squirmed on the inside. He knew what had happened while he was sleeping in all of that food when right to his body, and he wondered if it looked any decent upon him.  
“Please,” she whispered into his face. “Por favor.”  
He licked his lips as he fetched up a sigh, his chest rising up to as full as he could make it and then exhaled, relaxing the muscles in his stomach all the while. He felt himself starting to hang over the top of his unfastened jeans; he peered down and spotted a soft looking belly, still merely a bit round, but as he took his hand off of her to touch his body, he found his love handles had softened even more but maintained their lovely rounded shape. He rubbed his lower belly to find he was indeed rounder and fuller. The very touch of his own hand sent him reeling as he knew he really had grown to be that big.  
“So big,” he whimpered, raising his gaze from his body to her face.  
“So—So thick,” she breathed out, resting a hand on his bare belly. Lars shot out the tip of his tongue at the feel of her hand there: like the light tip of a feather on soft silk. “Don't hide. Don't hide from me. Don't hide from yourself, either. Please. Don't hide.”  
She switched off the heat on the stove and lay a lid over the pot of rice to let it rest for a moment. She then put her arms around his full waist and pressed herself against his chest.  
“Look at this big boy,” she commented in a husky voice. “This big sexy boy, in all of his sweetness and in all of his beauty. He's a beautiful boy. Really a beautiful boy now with this—amazing, alluring body and the sweetest of hearts.”  
“How does my face look?” Their voices seared through his mind.  
“Gorgeous. So round and beautiful, like the full moon.”  
“You really don't think I'm fat?”  
“You still have your shape,” she pointed out with a smirk crossing her face. “If anything, you are even sexier than before, being all… all full. I can't wait to watch you perform.”  
He pictured himself playing “Battery” and not losing his breath for a hot second. If anything, he foresaw James, Kirk, and Jason struggling to keep up with him. Her perfect body pressed even closer to him, and she breathed harder into his face, so he smelled the peppermint on her breath. She had brushed her teeth.  
“Oh—” she gasped into his face and his heart hammered inside of his chest.  
“Oh, God—” Her voice lowered to a throaty whisper. “—you are—mmm, you're so hot. Oh my fuck—”  
He swallowed as he could feel her heart racing even through his own skin and the fabric of his shirt. Her fingers caressed over his love handles before they slid behind the cheeks of his butt and gave him a light squeeze on both sides. His toes curled inside of his shoes again.  
“—you are—simply so sexy. So fucking sexy and decadent. I almost can't take it—I am utterly mystified by you.”  
She kissed him on the lips, a hearty deep kiss which included her sliding her hands up his lower back and all up his spine. His knees slacked and he nearly collapsed right there on the spot, but her holding him kept him in place. His hand, which still held his shirt up from his body, slid onto her chest right above her breasts. A soft, warm feeling replaced the rumbling void inside of his stomach, one that made him think of being cozy and snuggled down in bed, or laying in his mother's arms. He couldn't bring out the beast just yet as she kissed his neck; she said she was eager to watch him perform. Perhaps after her baking shindig she could tag along with them?  
Her lips were like plush little pillows on the side of his neck, so much that the feeling sent shivers down his spine. She stared into his eyes once again as she gave his chest another gentle caress. How he wanted that gentle touch in a place like the bed over to his left.  
“Pull yourself together, baby boy,” she whispered, “and let's go outside.”  
“You sure—You sure you don't—don't want to—stay indoors?”  
“Oh, come on, baby. We have been playing around with each other about the whole idea of having dinner and making love out in the woods here in Astoria.”  
“Yeah, but—what if it rains again?”  
“Oh, you know how we like being all wet while we're loving each other.”  
“True—” A rush of warmth flowed up from his stomach and into his chest, followed by his neck and shoulders. He was hungry again, so very much. Her smirk returned to her face once again.  
“Are you okay? You look—quite warm.”  
“Yeah, I'm just—I'm just—I'm—what were we talking about?”  
She burst out laughing as she let go of his body as she returned to the stove. He ran his fingers through his hair then tossed his bangs back from his forehead to ease the warmth spreading over his face. He rubbed the tip of his nose as he watched her pick up the one pot on the back burner with two oven mitts onto the wooden side table.  
“May I help you with something?” he offered, running his hand down the side of his face and onto his neck.  
“Er, yes! The rice.”  
Lars adjusted his shirt and fastened his jeans before picking up the pot of rice by the handles. He could hardly shake the feeling of her pressed against his body, so much that he wanted to lay on the grass outside with her as he set the pot on the floor behind his seat. The space between him and her made his hands itch; he wanted to touch her even as they climbed into the car and he caught himself laying down in the passenger seat.  
“Oh, shit, this thing is still reclined!” His voice came out in a little squeak. She giggled at him as he reached down to readjust the seat. The car firing up made him think of his own motor running while the warmth on his face only grew worse. But he refrained from rolling down the window lest she question it.  
He glanced down at his waist poking out in the form of a small round bump; he wrinkled his nose at the sight but he did it all for her. He kept one hand on his belly to feel his own warmth, and to return to that feeling back on Valentine's Day. She kept complimenting him, and he wanted to feel it, to shut out those hurtful words he had heard so many times, and to rub his nipples and his shaft to relax and feel it on the inside for himself.  
He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing in hopes to alleviate the itching on his hands but it only brought more itches, this time to his crotch and his hips. The monster needed to be fed again but he needed soft touch again. He lifted his head to kiss the side of her face, a gentle pat from his lips onto her smooth skin. Mia gave him a soft moan inside of her throat in return, and then a touch of his chin and his neck.  
“Please me, min sexet pige,” he whispered into her ear, never opening his eyes.  
“Of course, papacito—soon. We are almost there—”  
He kissed her again before sticking his nose into the roots of her hair to savor her smell. He thought of caressing one of her breasts but she already turned her head at one point to plant another firm kiss on his lips.  
“Open your eyes, baby,” she told him; he did, and gazed into those soft, welcoming dark eyes. He turned his head to peer out the windshield at the thick black tree trunks looming outside of the car.  
“This is a little salt water lagoon,” she explained, “we're about a hundred yards from the ocean.”  
“So I can be a merman!” he declared, the butterflies welling up inside of his stomach again.  
“You can be a merman.” Her eyes gleamed at that notion. Without hesitating, he unfastened his seat belt and scrambled out of the car to the cool crisp forest. He took in a deep inhale of the damp air as he stripped off his coat and let it lay into the cushion of the passenger seat. He gazed up at the scraggly branches pointing up to the overcast sky and extending out to the waters. Mia rounded the back of the car with the other pot in hand.  
“I hope you are hungry, baby doll.”  
“Look at us, darling,” he stated. “Look all around us. I could just—”  
He licked his lips as he clasped his hands to his hungry belly and then the itches became so unbearable he needed relief as soon as possible. He turned to her, only to be greeted by the smell of the stew in her hands and that twinkle in her eye.  
“I want you,” she told him.  
“I want you more,” he retorted, his fingers curling onto the fabric of his shirt.  
“Let's find a spot and dig in.”  
He raised his eyebrows at her before ducking into the back seat for the rice, and later on, once they had scouted out a spot on a rather firm patch of grass in between two tall dark trees and a low line of bushes, he returned for the blankets for them to be more comfortable. Once he had taken his seat on the blanket under one of the trees, his stomach let out a low growl that sent a wave of nausea over him. He clasped a hand to his belly as he crossed his legs and she lifted the lid from the stew and gave it a stir with the wooden spoon. The dampness of the forest had nothing on the warmth seeping out of that pot in front of him. It felt like she was enticing him all over again.  
She scooped out some of the rice into the little white bowl followed by that stew for him, and then she handed it to him.  
“Darling, come with us,” he blurted out as he cradled the bowl in his hands as if offering a sacrifice.  
“Come with you?” She was taken aback.  
“Yes! Come with us on this part of the tour. Please, my love.”  
“Lars—” She paused, keeping the spoon in the pot of rice and holding the bowl with her other hand. “Lars, I'd have to ask for more time off.”  
“Well, you can do it, can you?”  
“Yes, of course.”  
“Then please. Please. I need you. I need your love inside my belly and your touch on my body. I need you to love me and I need it with me as I embark on another adventure.” He stuck the spoon into the rice so he could lay his hand on the blanket, right next to her knee, and then he bowed his head to hide part of his eyes to seduce her.  
“I need you,” he repeated, his voice throaty, and smooth like velvet. She licked her lips as she glanced down at his hand. “And I know you want me.”  
“I do—chico hermoso.”  
“Honey pie…”  
“It's a deal,” she replied with a warm smile, “I'll call up Sandra and Danielle for a few days off following the competition and I will be with you, baby boy.” And the warmth in his chest returned right at that moment. She said yes again! He lifted his hand from the blanket to eat his rice and the fricassee.


	73. Chapter 73

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May the Quinto of the month leave all of youses feeling hot as hella xoxo

“I don't know if I can finish, baby. Would you like the rest?”  
Mia pushed her bowl before him: there was a great deal of rice left behind on the bottom of the bowl, but she had already eaten all of the stew. Meanwhile, Lars had finished his third helping and he felt quite full at that point. He wiped his mouth with one of the paper napkins and crumpled it up in the palm of his hand. He gazed up at the sky overhead and the break in the clouds, and he knew they were going to be there in the lagoon for a while, if not all night long. He thought about her high heeled leather boots and then he thought of when she was going to fuck him.  
“As long as I get to undo my pants for you,” he retorted with a raise of his eyebrow.  
“Por favor,” she answered, gesturing at his hips. He climbed to his feet and the full feeling in his stomach made him lose his balance a bit. He clasped his hands onto his belly before he reached down to unfasten the button on his jeans, which felt a little bit more snug than he remembered. His forearms brushed against the bottom of his under belly, much like caressing the soft pillowy side of a marshmallow; and then his jeans loosened up to where the fabric felt as though it was cradling his hips. Mia licked her lips at the sight of him before she climbed to her feet in front of him. She kissed him on the lips and showed him a warm smile.  
“Eat up,” she whispered to him as a cool breeze picked up through the bushes behind them. “I will be right back.”  
He sank back down to the blanket and picked up her bowl to finish the rice. It was a lot more than he expected as every single bite made his stomach swell even more; he could feel himself growing larger and rounder, just by sitting there. The feeling proved to be a bit more than he expected, and he responded with a little recline back towards the grass. All of that rice filling him up to the brim and in turn weighing his body down to the earth…  
He took one more bite before he lay all the way onto his back and rested the bowl on the blanket next to him. He closed his eyes as his chest heaved. It all proved to be a little bit too much for him, but that itch on his palms and over his hips persisted. That itch he couldn't scratch unless he licked his wounds and every grain of rice in that bowl. Surely there had to be a little bit more room inside of him before he had had enough for one evening.  
Lars ran his fingers through his bangs before he rolled his head to the side. He lay on his back but he could scarcely catch his breath: every exhale was followed by a light groan on the inside of his throat.  
The sound of her clearing her throat caught his attention and he opened his eyes to see her looming over him with her hands pressed to her hips. His stomach let out a soft, prolonged grumble from all the food inside of him.  
“If I had more of that rice to stuff your face with,” she started, tossing her hair back from her fair face, “and you had a feather up your ass, we all would be tickled.”  
He stifled a belch inside of his throat and she chuckled at the sight of her. It was too much for him to bear. He ached for relief, to utilize that firm full feeling within him onto her.  
“You know, one of these days, your belly button is not only going to make a regular appearance but it'll turn itself inside out,” she remarked with a devious smirk upon her face.  
“Cut the bullshit and show me your tits,” he blurted out, fighting off the urge to drift off to sleep. She stooped over to force him to witness her tongue lashing out of her mouth; she proceeded it with a wag of her finger at him.  
“Not yet, sexy boy,” she replied.  
“Cut the bullshit and show me your tits!” he barked, his stomach starting to ache; he grimaced at the feeling inside of him.  
She knelt down right above the crown of his head so she faced him upside down. The heat of her breath forced the muscles around his knees into relaxation, while her tongue made his heart hammer inside of his chest. He could feel his shaft stiffening.  
“Finish it,” she ordered.  
“Fin—” He lifted his head at the bowl next to him; she picked it up by the rim to show him a large bite of Spanish rice left behind.  
“Oh, fock.” He lay his head back down on the blanket.  
“Come on, you know you want it. You have got it inside of you. Inside of your hips. Inside of that belly. Don't kid yourself, Lars—don't fight it. Don't fight desire.”  
His chest heaved harder and harder as his heart hammered away inside of him. The skin on his belly tightened up with every breath as if he had a massive heavy balloon inside of him, a balloon that expanded with every breath. Their mocking voices swirled through him. He really was too big and round to love. He carried too much weight, just by the mere nature of his build and his body. They were right. They all were right.  
But then he thought of their upcoming tour and how he could perform by a mere solo feast before a show. All of the food in his stomach could give him strength to last him for hours on end. He flashed back on when Mia first went to their show in Portland and she was taken aback by the sight of his hair, still dry, and his face beholding a warm rosy glow.  
All the mesmerized looks! He could go play with Megadeth if he wished!  
Lars lifted the bowl and shoveled the bite into his mouth: it was easily two bites as the feeling of the grains forced his cheeks outward and his gullet to close up at first, but he managed to cram it into his mouth. The grains glided over the edges of his teeth with each and every gyration of his jaw. The flavors kissed him good night as he swallowed. His belly swelled to as big and far as he could feel it. He closed his eyes again as he spread his arms out from his body.  
“Ah—” he gasped, trying to catch his breath. She snickered at the sight of him.  
“—ah—oof—oooh, fucking hell.”  
“Getting full?”  
“I feel—I feel—” He strove to fight through the cloud inside of his mind. Laying flat on his back and breathing heavy sent his head into a spin again.  
“Yes?”  
“I feel like—I swallowed the whole—focking—moon. Beyond full… oh—!”  
“Pop out your chest,” she commanded. But he could hardly move his arms or his legs. He heard her shuffling around him, and towards his side. There was a soft poke right on his waist.  
“Oh, wow,” she remarked, giving his belly light gentle pokes, “holy shit. You really went over your borders here.”  
The touch of her finger made his head spin even more. The feeling proved to be too much but somewhere, deep down inside of him, he felt liberated. His body needed this, to be pushed to the very brim. And it gave him such a rush to the head, because he knew that she needed it to feel closer to him. She was there with him.  
His face grew warmer. He wanted to push his bangs off of his forehead but all that food inside of his stomach, all huge and bloated.  
He felt her lips on the rim of his belly button, and he arched his back to lift himself off the ground. He hoisted himself onto his elbows and lifted his head up to flash her a devious look.  
“You pop out your chest!” he growled, his voice breaking and his chest heaving. Despite being out of breath, he fought through the feeling and picked himself up off of the ground. He shifted his weight to where he suspended himself onto one arm: he eyed the soft silk rope in her one hand.  
“Tie me up—dammit,” he squeaked, panting. “Tie me up and bust my ass.”  
She licked her lips and held out the coil of rope before her face.  
“How should I do it?” she requested.  
“Take off—my pants. And tie up my ankles.”  
“And suckle you?”  
“Yes. Yes—darling. That's how you do it. And then I shall—” He burped inside of his throat, a belch that tasted of cumin and garlic.  
“You shall what?”  
“Stick my tongue—into your cunt. Right—through—your pussy—and into your pretty little cunt. Come to me—come—to me—and love me. Love me, please. Set me free from the pain I have known for far too long.”  
He shut his eyes again and gave himself to her once again. He relaxed his whole body as she lifted his ankles off of the ground and yanked his jeans off from his legs and over his tennis shoes: chills shot over the skin on his thighs and his lower legs. His hips tingled as she picked up his ankles again to tie them together. All of the food inside of his belly remained firm in its place.  
He stuck his tongue out from the inside of his mouth, and then licked the side of his bottom lip and the corners of his mouth. He let his arms lay out from his body; and then there was that tingling sensation in his hips. He hoped she would remember to kiss him again there on the hip bones—those light kisses he absolutely loved—as he felt her twine the rope around his fine ankles. She tied a knot over the top of his left foot.  
“Alright, baby,” she told him, and he felt her roll him back onto his back. The insides of her thighs pressed against his hips; she lifted the bottom of his shirt to expose his chest and his satiated belly. The tips of her fingers caressed over the pit in his chest and down onto the spot, right over his stomach.  
“I'm a merman…” he gasped out as she massaged him and rubbed him down, the soft skin on the palms of her hands shooting more shivers across his skin and down his spine. His voice echoing over the monoliths that were the trees in the lagoon. “I'm a merman! Jeg er en herre! Jeg er en herre!”  
“Shut up,” she whispered, pinching his nipples. He arched his back again as he tilted his head back and opened his mouth to let out a loud shriek.  
“I said shut up!”  
Right as he opened his eyes, Mia pressed her lips right onto the soft silky skin around his thick waist. She kissed him there once, twice, four times, before she gave him a nibble. His legs writhed at the piercing sensation of her teeth but the sharp pricks only tickled him even more: the butterflies became nothing at that point since he couldn't move his legs or his feet about. No escape.  
Now the head of his dick wriggled as his shaft firmed up. She nibbled on him again and then followed it up with a sweet little kiss. A soft, loving touch followed by a minute spike of dull pain combined with the massive feeling inside of his stomach made his hips thrust.  
“I want—” she said in between kisses as the breeze kicked up again, whispering through the trees overhead in a soft white noise. She nibbled on his skin again and his toes curled inside of his shoes. “I want—to fill this belly—with so much. No, with everything.” She sucked on his skin which brought out a gasp from him. “All of the pastries and all of the heavy cream… I am going to love you, and nourish you, and pleasure you—and kiss you—and bite you—”  
The next gentle nibble made him moan, a low guttoral moan from deep inside of him.  
“Fuck the ordinary life—” she declared, lifting her head and rubbing his belly with one hand. “I want it better and I want it well.”  
“And well you will get it—oh, Christ Almighty, fuck me—”  
Lars rolled a bit onto his side with his eyes still closed. He could still feel the edges of her teeth on his skin and he wanted more. The rush of it all rendered him breathless.  
“Do that—again—” he gasped out.  
“You want some more love bites?”  
“Behage.”  
There was a pause, and then the edges of her teeth brushed against his silky skin, a light delicate pinch with just the right amount of pain in there to make his legs writhe underneath her. Each nibble edged him closer and closer, to the point where he couldn't take it. The next nibble she coincided with a stroke of his shaft: she had stuck her free hand underneath the band of his underwear and began touching him with every kiss and every bite she gave him.  
“GOD! GOOOOD! OH MY FUCK, YOU DO THAT SO FUCKING WELL! YEAH—AH!”  
He was about to come when she let go of his shaft, but he still shot out a load as she crab walked towards his head on his left so as to not knock over the empty pots. She kissed him on the mouth and then he reached up to fondle her on the chest. He could see she had already taken off her pants and her underwear for him so he could see the hot pink frilly lips between her legs.  
“Ride the lightning, papacito,” she told him, her eyes gleaming.  
“Ride the fucking lightning, honey pie—” he echoed in a hoarse voice. “Come right up here—”  
She squatted over his face and he stuck his tongue into her. Once again, she tasted of vinegar, but there was a little sugar in there, like a cube of sugar in his cup of hot tea. Pleasure spiked with a light kiss of pain.  
Mia started breathing heavy with every stroke of his tongue. He thought of giving her a nibble when she let out a soft moan.  
“Come closer,” he ordered, and she buckled her knees even more so she hovered right over his face. He stuck his tongue deeper into her with each lick and she moaned out every time; when he stretched his tongue as far as he could make it, and to where his teeth were right there in front of the edges of her clit, the moans morphed into yelps. A voice in the back of Lars' mind told him they were alone there in the lagoon. Ever so careful not to break that delicate tissue, he brushed the front of his two front teeth against her. And she tilted her head back—  
“WOOOO-AH OH MY FUCKING HELL! OH! OH! OH, DADDY!”  
Mia fell onto her back and Lars took out his tongue. He rolled over onto his side, spat off to the side, and then rubbed his eyes with his left hand before he gazed on at her there on the grass with her legs wide open and her hips shuddering. Panting, she lifted herself onto her elbows to look at him.  
“Are you—Are you alright?” he asked her, his voice almost gone.  
“Oh—I am more than alright! Come here—” She closed her legs before she scrambled back next to him, on his left side. She kissed him on the neck as she put her arm around his chest; she held onto the side of his face and he showed her a gentle grin.  
“Tell me you love me,” he whispered to her.  
“I sat on your face—of course I love you, baby boy. And, by the way, I really meant that. I want to fill you with so much delicious food and keep you sexy and hot.”  
“And I'm more than happy to eat it all up. It all feels so good on the inside, skat.” She kissed his neck again before she started stroking his bare chest.  
“Speaking of hot,” he started, taking a glimpse at her and the tiny beads of sweat forming under her eyes.  
“Oh, my God, that was—that was—”  
“Yeah, I agree.”  
The breeze whispered through the trees again and they both sighed at the same time.  
“Let's just—lay here for a little bit,” she suggested, sliding her hand down to his belly which still felt stuffed full.  
“Yeah, I don't feel like untying myself just yet.”  
“Oh, shit, I forgot I tied you up.”  
“You didn't feel me wriggling about? Trying to break free?”  
“That was the best part! I love it when you get all hot and bothered.”  
“Ah, don't we all, darling…”


	74. Chapter 74

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Sir Psycho Sexy that is me,  
> sometimes I find I need to scream.  
> He's a freak of nature, but we love him so.  
> He's a freak of nature, but we let him go.”  
> -“Sir Psycho Sexy”, Red Hot Chili Peppers

Lars had dozed off yet again because when he awoke, moisture covered the right side of his face and his neck; his bangs matted to his forehead, while part of his hair stuck to his ear and then the side of his head. He hadn't moved from the spot there on the blanket, but he felt Mia snuggled next to him. The memory of laying in the backseat returned to him, except the cold had faded out from this night and he managed to roll his head to the side without his body shuddering. His clothes still clung to his body leaving his skin feeling soaked as if he had taken a shower.  
He reached down with his right hand to touch himself and pull his shirt down over his chest and his belly; he tried to move his legs but the rope remained tight around his ankles.  
“Shit,” he muttered aloud as a gentle grumble emerged from the lower part of his belly. She groaned in her throat.  
“Mia—Mia, darling—” She groaned again.  
“Mia—” He spat out a piece of his hair before speaking again.  
“Mia—Mia, I'm moist.”  
“Hm?” In the dim light, he could see her open her eyes. “What'd you say?”  
“I'm moist,” he said in a flat tone.  
“You're moist?” she repeated, chuckling.  
“Totally moist. I also have to shit and I can't move.”  
“But you're so cute, being all tied up.”  
“Would you like me to jizz again? Because I will do that.”  
She paused.  
“You really have to—?”  
“Yes. It feels like I'm carrying several big fucking tennis balls inside of my intestines.”  
“Okay—”  
Her silhouette lifted herself off of the top of the blanket, and then he saw nothing after that.  
“Jesus, it's dark out,” he noted; he was wary to move too much.  
“It's all cloudy. Like, there are totally no stars overhead—that's why we're all wet, too.”  
Her fingers stroked his ankles and his feet, but he held still there on the blanket, awaiting the undoing of the rope. He stared up at the darkness and pictured all of the hands of everyone he knew touching the new weight on his hips and his waist. That heavy feeling inside of the whole middle of his body proved to be a bit too much, too much to go without a light touch upon his flesh. But he needed to hold it in a little while longer until he felt the rope lax around the sides of his ankles.  
Her fingers brushed against his feet like light downy feathers, so much that he rolled his head about on the blanket and bent his knees a bit.  
“Lars, hold still,” she commanded.  
“Forgive me—it's just—”  
“Wha?”  
“You're tickling me.”  
“Okay, okay—I am almost done, though—just have this last hitch here and—there we go!”  
He moved his ankles apart and then buckled his left knee, followed by his right knee. He opened his mouth to let out a sigh of relief and a low groan.  
“Ahhhhh—okay, I have to find a water closet. Big time.”  
He lifted himself off the ground and it all rushed towards his hips. He stood still there in the middle of the blanket with his thighs pressed to each other to hold it in. There was a clanking noise with the bowls and the spoons, followed by a soft porcelain on porcelain sound. Then he felt her hand on his thigh. Her nimble fingers crept up his hip and onto the lower side of his belly. Something about that sensation tickled him.  
“Oh—” he gasped.  
“What?”  
“Nothing, I just—like your hand there.”  
“On your belly?”  
“On my belly. All full of piss and vinegar, too. I just—”  
“You like feeling full.” He pictured her grinning at him just by the sound of her voice. “It's immensely—immensely—”  
Her voice sounded much closer to him than before, and he figured out she was right beneath him. He could smell her in front of him, and he could feel her hand still upon his belly.  
“—immensely lovely and erotic for you. Now help me out here.”  
“What should I do?”  
“Move this way—” She kept her hand on his belly as she guided him to the side; the wet grass squeaked underneath his bare feet as he moved off of the blanket so she could pick everything up in one fell swoop. There was a soft rustling noise and then—  
“Okay, come on,” she coaxed him, resting a hand upon the back of his shoulder. They walked through the darkness, which hung over them like a heavy wet blanket; the skin on his legs from his thighs down to his ankles and his feet felt smooth to the touch, even though he had plenty of hair to go about from his crotch down to his ankles. He shivered a bit from the feeling and the squeak of the grass underneath his bare feet; the chill from the grass only made the heavy feeling inside of him worse, so much that he almost walked forward with his knees pinched together. He clasped a hand onto his belly to ease the feeling a bit longer.  
“Do you have my pants in there?” he asked her as a dark figure appeared before them. He stuck out his free hand to touch the glass of the window and the metallic edge of the car door.  
“Yes, I do—and your tennies,” she replied; her keys jingled all the way around the front of the car towards the driver's side. A soft click emerged from the inside of the car and she flung open the door on her side, and the light from the middle of the ceiling sliced through the darkness around them. Lars blinked several times as his eyes adjusted to the light and then he sank into the passenger seat without any further hesitation. The door behind the driver's seat closed and darkness returned for a few seconds, until the driver's side door opened again for her to climb into the seat next to him.  
Before she shut the door, she held onto the key with her index finger and her thumb, and then eyed Lars' thighs, and the fine dark hair on top laying flat upon his skin.  
“Let's get you a towel, too—my little wet boy.”  
He pinched his thighs together with an “oof!” to give her a clue.  
“Okay, yes, yes, yes! Keep your legs crossed a little bit longer, baby—”  
She shut the door and inserted the key into the ignition. He grunted and groaned from the feeling inside of him: granted her hand there helped ease the feeling, and if anything made it quite nice: indeed, he pictured James or Dave touching him there and it brought a little smile to his face but for a second.  
He needed to relieve himself.  
He kept his head bowed the whole way back to the campground; every minute felt like an hour, while every corner and every turn felt like so much extra pressure on his body to hold it together just a little bit longer.  
She pulled into the campground, and headed to the building on the other side of the park.  
“I'll wait right here,” she told him as he burst out of the front seat, still without pants, and to the men's room. He ducked inside and into the closest stall, and he peeled off his wet underwear and took a seat.  
He spent a little more than ten minutes in that bathroom, but it sufficed for him: he strode out of there with a sigh of relief and clean smelling hands. This time, however, his legs shivered and covered with goose skin as he slipped into the front seat.  
“Ah, yes,” he declared, closing the door and then running a hand through his wet hair.  
“Feel better?”  
“So very much. Got more rent space inside my belly now, and I stepped into one of the showers in there, too, just to like—you know, wash out my hair and my legs. So now, I'm just ready to look sexy for you again.”  
“Again? Lars, seeing you without pants on is already quite sexy.”  
“You think so?”  
“Yes! Just your shirt and your underwear covering up your body—and seeing your bare legs…”  
In the dim light, he could see her lick her lips.  
“Well, let's see, it's only eight o'clock and we're here in Astoria.”  
“I should also add, I'm a little bit hungry, too.”  
“Of course,” she joked, pulling the parking brake and starting up the car again. “But let's get you into dry pants and your tennies again. And then maybe we can look for some pan dulce here in town.”  
They headed back to their yurt in a brief silence, and then Lars piped up again.  
“Oh, shit! I forgot to tell you—I finally bought myself a bath mat back at the house.”  
“Oh, good! So we can—” She turned to look at him with her eyebrows raised.  
“Oh, yes. I am thinking—I will hold you around the waist while we fuck with all the water drizzling all around us.”  
“I will have to ask Mike for a little lube when I see her again. Also, when you were in there, I saw Ashley and James walking by. She told me they were looking for a romantic dinner for themselves.”  
“Did you see where they went?”  
“I didn't, but James looked quite famished himself. But for now—some pan dulce followed by a little spanking to remind me that I have a coochie?”  
“Coochie coochie coo,” he teased her, and she giggled as they pulled into the space before the porch. “Wait. What if I—strip for you later on?”  
“Oh, will you now?”  
“Absolutely. Granted, I didn't see a record player in here so I can't put on any Maiden or Sabbath for us. But I still wanna do it for you, though.”  
They climbed out of the car and headed up the porch with the assistance of the distant light of the front of the campground and the ambient light from the nearby town. She unlocked the front door, while he flicked on the light then reached for one of the clean white towels on the shelf next to the oven and wrapped it around his legs. He fell back onto the bed once again and closed his eyes.  
“I say we have a little quickie,” she suggested, tossing the keys onto the table next to the couch. He lifted his head right then.  
“Shall I make myself into a stripper?”  
“With the towel?” she wondered aloud as she shut the door behind her. “Unless you wanna belly dance for me.”  
“Nah, my belly's too empty for dancing at the moment.” He lay his head back down on the bed. “As for right now, I will do this, though—”  
He spread his thighs apart and threw the towel off of him. He heard her coat rustling, followed by her shoes padding on the floor in front of him. She threw herself onto his body and gazed into his eyes as she stroked the sides of his face; he noticed she had taken off her shirt and her bra so she exposed the whole upper half of her body to him.  
“Do it, papacito. Strip for me. Please me.”  
He showed her a devious snarl before he pushed her off of him. He then climbed over her and gave her the exact same stare.  
“Not if I strip for you first,” he retorted in a low growl; wet tendrils of hair cascaded down from his head and onto her chest, “and please the both of us.”  
He lifted himself off of her to take off his shirt and show her his body, now softer and rounder than ever; his arms and legs on the other hand, maintained their toned appearance. He knelt down over her hips so she could be within reach of his belly, a soft round bump bulging out from the middle of his body. She lifted a hand to fondle that belt of soft flesh upon his waist. The feel of her fingers set him free from those old scars.  
“God, you're so cute—and so strong. Everything I could ever ask for.”  
He ran his fingers along the curvature of her breasts and the pointed hardened dark skin of her nipples, and then down her belly; he found she had softened quite a bit herself as the curve on her waist had grown rounder. Lars leaned forward so he suspended himself into a push up position over her. He tilted his head to the side as if he was examining a perfect specimen.  
“Oh—boys with chubby round faces are so kissable,” she whispered as he leaned closer into her face to give her a kiss on the lips, followed by one on her chin and then he fluttered his eyelashes against her cheek to imitate a butterfly. He arched his back as he lay his lips on the side of her neck. He was about to reach her chest when there was a knock on the door.  
“Fuck, shits—who's there?” He lifted his head and faced the door.  
“James and Ashley!” she called through the wood.  
“Dammit. Alright, well, give us a moment please!” He returned to her. “Shall we resume later on?”  
“Si, chico hermoso,” she grinned at him; he gave her another kiss on the lips before climbing off of her and fetching his towel off of the bed. He neglected to put on his shirt as he ambled across the floor to the door. He was greeted by the sight of James keeping his arm around Ashley's shoulder.  
“We were wondering if you guys would like to join us for some pie,” she told him, tossing her hair back from her face and showing him the streaks over her temples; Lars whirled around to see Mia sliding off of the bed and trying to stay quiet while she dressed herself again.  
“I'd love to have some pie,” she agreed, picking her bra off of the floor. He rubbed his nose before returning to them.  
“I have to get dressed—”  
“You can just wear that towel,” suggested James with a big beaming grin.  
“It's so chilly out, though! What will Dale think, too?”  
“He doesn't care,” said Ashley. “If nothing, you can just say you got out of the shower.”  
“Can I at least put on my shoes?”  
“Of course.”  
Lars ducked behind the door right as Mia pulled her top back on over her body before she lunged for his overnight bag in the corner.  
Once the two of them were dressed, they followed James and Ashley to the yurt next door; Dale, a burly man with long blond hair down to his shoulders and wrapped in a dark sweater, awaited for them at the picnic table on the porch. When they approached closer, Lars noticed the trio of pie tins and a stack of paper plates on top of the table.  
“PIE!” he declared, his voice echoing over the blacktop before them and he broke into a sprint.  
“Whoa, easy there, little guy!” Dale jumped back a bit at the sight of him.  
“Excuse me, I am just hungry,” Lars clarified as he climbed up the steps, eager to sink his teeth into a slice of pie.  
“Yeah, he's got a tummy to fill,” added Mia as she came within earshot.  
“Well, let's see, we've got cherry—” Dale gestured to the one on Lars' right, the one with a latticed top over reddish filling. “—marionberry—” The one in the middle with a full crust on top. “—and grasshopper.” The one on the left with a pearly white meringue top over pale green filling.  
“One of grasshopper, please,” he asked, remembering his manners, and Dale lifted the silvery knife to carve out the first slice from the one on Lars' left. He took a plate and a plastic fork, and dug into the creamy peppermint pie with a smooth marshmallow meringue on top and a crumbly chocolate crust. Lars stayed nestled in between Mia and James the whole time they ate their slices of pie. But there was a great deal left behind in each of the tins by the time they finished their slices.  
“Lars wants more,” she announced, anticipating his desire before he was even aware of it.  
“Go nuts, man,” Dale gestured to the tins before him and Ashley. “They've only got room in their fridge for one tin, so have at it.”  
Indeed, Lars took a second slice of grasshopper pie, followed by a third, and started to feel full by his fourth. All the mint, the butter, the chocolate, and the crème on the inside of the pie filled him up to satiation once again.  
Meanwhile, the four of them tackled the marionberry and the cherry instead; the tin of the latter, they had cleaned out until all but a few crumbs had been left behind in the bottom. Dale took care of putting the remaining pieces of pie in that empty tin while the four of them gave each other hugs good night. Lars almost rolled back to the yurt, he was so full.  
Mia tossed her hair back from her face before opening the front door of their yurt. Once he was inside, he leaned back against the door and lay his hands on his belly. She kicked off her shoes, and took off her coat and her blouse once again before leaning on her back on top of the bed.  
“You wanna sexy belly dance now?”  
He ran the tip of his tongue along the top of his bottom lip in anticipation. He then held onto the bottom hem of the shirt and lifted up, in turn exposing his belly again: this time, he carried a softer, rounder shape from the feeling inside of him. He peeled his shirt off all the way and let it fall onto the floor behind him. He then lifted his arms over his head to show her his armpits as well as his body. He cocked out his hips as he moved his right foot out first.  
“Oh, baby,” she whispered.  
“Come to papa, honey pie—” He ran his forearm over the crown of his head, which in turn pushed his bangs off of his forehead. “Come—and meet your master.” He gyrated his hips with every step closer to her: the flesh around his waist hung out for her and he could feel his strength beginning at the base of his spine. He really was the master that night, guiding her and putting on a show just for her, which in turn prepared him for his first show in a couple of weeks.


	75. Chapter 75

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “So let me hold it up just one more go, holding it over just once more.  
> One more time to fill it up, one more time to kill.  
> Whatever I do it's never enough.”  
> -“Never Enough”, The Cure

Lars found himself alone in their first stop in Denver, given Mia could not take time off for at least a week. He objected to the idea of her not receiving more days off for a vacation, but Sandra had already put her foot down by the time he departed from Portland on the next plane back to San Francisco.  
He had a few days of down time alone at the house in El Cerrito: the final day before hopping onto the plane to head out, he stood in the shower on his brand new bath mat with the warm water cascading over his head and shoulders. Strands of wet hair hung down from the side of his head and his brow towards the drenched floor of the bathtub as he stooped down to wash his legs. He eyed his thighs, his hips, and his sack, the latter of which hung there limp but a little bit inflated from the water around him. It was times like this he wondered how he could walk around with that thing getting in the way. Using two fingers on his free hand, he stroked the shaft as droplets of water trickled down his wrists and the backs of his hands.  
He hadn't touched himself like this in a few days, but then again, he had no need to do such a thing with Mia around him.  
One of the last things he had had at her house was a glass of heavy cream with a plate of grasshopper pie Dale had given him for the ride home. He could feel the fat in the cream sticking to his waist and his hips; he awoke in his bed feeling ample, more so than he had ever felt in his life. When he touched the flesh above his hips with the tips of his fingers, it felt as though he was touching a thick pillow of butter. Upon stroking the bristle of hair on his round chin, he could feel the skin on his face filling out and softening in her wake.  
Ah, his face, growing so much rounder and fuller than he had ever imagined in his life.  
Lars found himself lost on a path going solo at the sight of his face staring back at him as he dried off with a towel over his wash basin. Those full cheeks and that slight rounded, but tight double under his chin. He set the towel atop his head so he could run his hands down his chest and his belly, the latter of which he gave a light jiggle, and the flesh moved about like a small bowl of Jello. He then gave himself a gentle tap with the tips of his fingers. He had grown thick and round and a little soft, but he kept his shape, as if he was meant to carry more weight than when he started the relationship.  
He ran the tip of his index finger around the rim of his belly button. Her touch still lingered on the surface of his skin: her fingers on his hips, and the palm of his hand on his butt at every whim. How he wanted to flirt around again.  
When he stepped out of the bathroom, he kept the towel around his waist, and the side of his hand under his belly button. He gave the lower part of his belly, that plump silky skin, a gentle rub with his free hand. He wanted to feel the same love for himself how she felt for him. He padded into the kitchen and gave himself another loving rub before he peeked into the refrigerator for some sliced pastrami in the meat drawer. There was no pastrami, but there was that bottle of heavy cream. He unscrewed the lid and took a swig right there, and set down the bottle on the counter for a moment.  
Since it was a lovely day in the middle of March, he returned to his room to get dressed. He put on a clean pair of jeans only to find the flesh making up his under belly hung out over the top of the waist. He stroked the skin on his waist and then on his hips. So much fuller and thicker.  
“God, what is happening to me,” he muttered to himself as he zipped up and then slipped on a black shirt, the fabric of which hugged his body. He gave himself another stroke before returning to the bathroom to stand on the scale once again.  
“Oh—Oh, shit.”  
He almost ran off of the scale, and then ducked out of there to return to the kitchen for his bottle of heavy cream to take with him outside to watch the incoming San Francisco on the horizon and soak in the final rays of sunlight.  
“Yeah—I think scuba diving will do,” he said to himself, tipping the mouth of the bottle onto his bottom lip once again. The silky smooth but plain cream washed down his throat to add even more to his body. “Give me that show already.”

Lars joined James, Kirk, and Jason on the next flight out to Denver at four o'clock in the morning; all four of them were alone in first class of the plane. While James and Jason both fell back to sleep, and all Kirk wanted to do was flirt with the stewardess, he stared out the window at the waning stark darkness over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the distant notches of sage and stubby pinion pines across the Great Basin Desert; all the while, he kept his hands lain upon his belly. He could feel the hunger rising up inside of him, gnawing away at the pit of his stomach, like an angry itch.  
The return of the angry itch with Lars Ulrich, he thought to himself as he sighed through his nose.  
He curled his fingers over the fabric of his shirt. He had had the rest of that bottle of cream before he left that morning but it did not do enough to tithe him over until they landed in Colorado. There was the airline food, but it never tasted well and it never filled him up in the way he wanted it to.  
He stared out the window again to take his mind off of it, but it persisted. That nagging feeling grinding away at him from the inside, and to the point something swept over him. The gentle sway of the plane did nothing to help matters, either; James' light snoring next to him only made him fixate on the feeling even more. He parted his lips and let out a soft groan.  
He wanted to grab Kirk's attention in the seat ahead or wake up either James or Jason and proclaim that he didn't feel good, but he feared if he even so much as lifted a finger from his torso, he would lose it. He remained still, right there in his seat and looking out the window at the first rays of daylight shining over the landscape down below, and the blackness overhead in turn lightening into a rich royal blue. Aside from the few nibbles on his bottom lip to put a little moisture in his skin, he did not move a muscle. The grumbles from his stomach soon followed before they reached the airport in Denver; angry and often loud grumbles that only brought a feeling of weakness and discomfort over his whole body.  
“God—” he groaned under his breath; meanwhile, James maintained his light snore, and Jason never stirred, and Kirk kept chattering to the black haired stewardess who frequented him more often than not given he was the only active one in first class. Lars writhed in his seat at the next two deep growls inside of his stomach. Denver was only ten minutes out but he could not resist the feeling anymore. Mia did tell him to not resist his desires from his flesh after all.  
He reached over James' slumbering body to grab the stewardess' attention.  
“Excuse me, I am like—really hungry right now. I know we're not far away but I'm dying here.”  
“Oh, I'm so sorry—the window for breakfast closed not even two minutes ago, and I gave him the last available muffin.” She gestured to Kirk in front of them and he let out a loud sigh; but then again, she had a gentle, caring expression in response to the sight of his round face and the incoming stubble on his chin and his jaw.  
“Thank you, though—” Lars leaned back in his seat again as she stepped away. Those final ten minutes seemed to trudge by, and even then they had to pass through customs; at that point, he walked about with a spin in his head and a jauncy feeling inside of his body. His overnight bag weighed down his shoulder and his back with every step. Before reaching his driver parked outside of the airport, he ducked into a narrow nook in the brick wall that was a coffee shop.  
The warm aromas cradled him as he ran his fingers through his bangs: the sight of all the pastries and things under the glass display to his left only made him hungrier.  
He asked for the big fat double chocolate muffin at the back of the display and a cup of espresso with a shot of vanilla crème. Before he reached into his pocket for his wallet, something caught his eye. Next to the cash register was a stack of hard covered journals on display. He had an idea right then, given he and Mia were going to be apart for a bit and he had some things rolling inside of him that needed to be written down. He picked out the black leather one on the top shelf and then paid ten dollars for everything.  
He couldn't get the muffin into his mouth faster, sensual chocolate batter with smooth chunks of chocolate embedded within, going right to the muffin top on his waist. He thanked the baristas and headed back out to catch up with his driver at the curb outside, and drove him to their hotel.  
Once he had checked in and finished off his muffin, he set down his overnight bag and noticed the sliding glass door, separating the room from a narrow porch looking out to the rest of Denver; off in the distant stood the snow capped summit of Pike's Peak. He pushed open the door and took a seat at the spindly metal table before the edge of the porch with his coffee and his new journal.  
He stood right back up, and headed back into the room for a pen on the table, and swiped it, and took it back outside. He opened to the first page, greeted by the new paper smell. He took off the cap of the pen and proceeded to write something that no one need know about it.

“I will call you Elska, after my love.”

Once he wrote that down, soon the words followed suit and came to him.

“Elska Pandekager, for your filmy pages and after the lovely warm pancakes that make my own nauseated stomach warm on a cold Danish night. I am alone in a plain hotel in the heart of Denver, Colorado. There is not a speck of dirt anywhere here on the floor beneath me. Everything is clean and in order, just how it should be. Pike's Peak is off in the distance. I am alone, craving something, but I haven't a clue what it looks like.”

He took another sip from his cup before proceeding onward with his writing.

“My name is Lars, I am twenty three years old and I am a fuck on two legs. Really, I am the biggest fuck I know. I've got a round doughy face and long hair because I would much rather have it long, and recently, I have… more or less gotten a big fat belly. Well, it's not that fat but I find it is. I have a little curve around my waist and I feel myself getting fuller and rounder every time I even so much as think about food. I have these plump handles over my hips and my face is all but perfectly round. Everything is soft and thick, even my thighs. I made a goal of thirty five pounds for her… but I recently weighed myself and found I gained almost forty pounds. Oops.  
“The kids in Danish school would mock me for my face, my big cheeks in particular. I was made into a petty jealous cunt because of it, in how they were all much prettier than me, like how the boys all could land any girl of their choosing. Why do they get all the pretty girls and I'm having to walk to school solo? And, conversely, why do the pretty girls get the good looking boys and I'm having to whack off solo?  
“It was pounded into my head that I was difficult to love because of myself. Every time I look in the mirror I see a human who's fat, and with more chins than a Chinese phone book, and despite having the organs, he's upon the line of androgyny. And yet? I am a slave to my own flesh, making my stomach feel good, and to learn to love the pain I feel by stuffing my ass with anything and everything. I am swine and sometimes I feel like my body is broken because of it. I need to eat otherwise I lose myself in the gray haze of memory.  
“As mentioned, I grew up in Denmark, a tiny archipelago better known as Germany's extended dick that's fucking the hole of Sweden and eyeing Norway for a potential threesome whereas Finland is standing off to the side with Russia while the Baltcs are standing around clueless. But I came here to the United States on a wink and a promise and a big tennis racket, bigger than my belly even, nestled right between my legs. There is only about seven million of us Danes in the world given the cluster of islands abound and so of course I am having to eat my heart out. I want the food in my belly before those bastards get to it first. Is it crazy? Perhaps. But then again, on the other hand, I followed Motorhead all around California one time and Lemmy took a picture of me while I was asleep with a streak of cold puke on my chest, in the middle of the day no less. What I do for myself and my body pales in comparison.  
“I am a kinky, filthy little boy. I was born kinky. I grew up jacking off to Joan Jett, and I will be damned if I don't die strangled by my own choosing as I tried to up the ante on jacking off some more. I have a cock of brass and it's going to take a lock box of double plated steel to help me out.  
“On the other other hand, I have found her. But returning to the first hand, I must confess: I have my doubts. The doubts I feel in my body and in my heart. Please, don't tell anyone this, but I feel too little to please her, even with forty extra pounds all around the middle of my body. Better yet, if anything, I feel too much to bear. I'm too much of a bother for her. I have confessed it to her before, but she assured me otherwise. But it's hard to believe it when I have heard otherwise my whole fucking life. Do you see my predicament here, Elska?  
“All of her kind words, her sweet prowess upon my body, her little kitty meowing for me... my trousers are tight, and I do not believe it is from those forty pounds of flesh. My desire at the moment is to be touched, to be felt. Touch me... someone touch me. Look into my eyes and feel me. Touch and feel my body. Run your fingers over my potbelly and kiss me there. Kiss me and give me a pinch, a spank, and a nibble while you're at it. Caress me and squeeze the pockets of fat over my hips. Put your nose up to my sweaty smelly unwashed Danish pits and take in my musk. I cannot bear a mockery anymore: love me. Love me for every sensory output that emerges from my body, and love me for me. Is that too hard?  
“Hand gestures are my best friends when I am alone. Or better yet, when I'm hungry. I can't explain it, Elska. I feel better when I touch or rub myself when my stomach is screaming at me. Soft touch when I'm hungry or horny or living on cloud nine. On the other hand, sweat tells me I am doing well at my job. If I lose weight on this tour, I have hope for this little fetish I have in my belly and my pants.  
“Earlier I was feeling so hungry, it made me sick, like car sick. It's a ghastly feeling and it comes with the extra pounds. I wish I was making this up, and only she and my parents know about this, but I am at the point I feel arousal whenever I am met with a great deal of food, in particular spicy and sweet food. I cannot wait to return to Oregon with her to eat up those samples at her little baking shindig, coincidentally I cannot wait to let my muffin top do the talking at the show tonight.”

He took one final sip of his espresso before closing the journal and setting down his pen.  
“No one needs to know about this,” he said aloud, climbing to his feet to put the empty cup in the bin.


	76. Chapter 76

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “My lips are moving and the sound's coming out  
> The words are audible but I have my doubts  
> that you realize what has been said.  
> You look at me as if you're in a daze.  
> It's like the feeling at the end of the page  
> when you realize you don't know what you just read.”  
> -“Words”, Missing Persons

“Oh. My God. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit, Elska, you should have seen the crowd! I sat down behind the drum set and noticed a bunch of chicks up front staring at my muffin top—one of them winked at me! I have no clue if I should consider Mia and me as a couple just yet, even though we have been dating, chasing each other's ass, and screwing each other since the fall, but I felt so good when I saw it. I felt them staring at my ass and my love handles while I was playing and, I must confess, I felt a little shy at first. You know, because I have all of this extra flesh on my body, but then I took my shirt off and I stood there over the kit pointing at people in the crowd. And then I realized I was being looked at by the audience on the other side of me.  
“I could feel them eyeing the curves over my hips and the thickening muscles in my thighs. At one point, I turned back around to take a look at them. I have never seen so many tongues lashing out of so many mouths. They are hungry here in Denver. But not like how I am hungry right now as we speak. And if you are curious, yes, I only broke out a tiny sweat down the side of my forehead. It was weird, because I always sweat when I drum hard and fast, and I was moving along, and talking trash, and forcing James, Kirk, and Jason to follow me. When Mia entered the picture, I noticed sweat stays at bay when I stuff my gullet silly prior to playing. And yet? I only had a sandwich and a grapefruit prior to the show, and I barely broke a sweat. I thought of running backstage real quick to grab one of my old tennis headbands and then toss it around the crown of my head just to like give the idea that I was working hard. Alas, I did not. When I walked off the stage, I tossed my totally bone dry hair back from my warm skin and went right for the pizza waiting for us. It was quite delicious.”

“One of these days, James is going to fart so loud, it will make the whole building shake down to its very foundations.  
“Scratch that. One of these days, James is going to fart so loud, it will make the whole building shake down to its very foundations while Dave is going to wonder what the hell was that noise.  
“No, no, no, no, no, scratch that. One of these days, James is going to fart so loud, it will make the whole building shake down to its very foundations and Dave will wonder what the hell was that noise and the guys from Soundgarden will think Mount Rainier just experienced an earthquake. And then I am going to belch and fill the whole room with the shaking of my gut and my gullet.”

“I ate the biggest muffin for dessert, and I had two for breakfast. So just call me the muffin man. I like to eat muffins, blueberry, buttered, chocolate, whatever. Give me one right now and I just might butter it up and give it a light spanking.”

“Fuck, this sucks. I am alone in this big room right now. I should be eating a whole pizza. Or pancakes. Or both. Make my belly absolutely bulge out for pleasure and for the look of it. This sucks. Like, this sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.”

“My two biggest wet dreams right now are Mia playing guitar with Jerry and James singing 'I Know What Boys Like' by The Waitresses. I hope to God that she picks up a little acoustic while we're away from Oregon for the time being. I tried to talk him into it earlier this evening but he pushed me out of his face like get the fuck away you little gremlin.”

“I'm an arrogant fuck. The biggest fuck on two legs. The biggest littlest fuck on two legs? Fuck, I have not a clue. Fuck. Fucking fuck.”

“I pray for the day a man get to wear a dress without some jerkoff saying no, what the hell are you doing, give that back…”

“This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.”

“I am a creep and a complete weirdo. Sometimes I wonder what I am doing here. Hmmm.”

“I am part Jewish. Oy vay.”  
“I am part Jewish but is there a God? Or am I my own god, feeling the strength and power within me and inside of my solar plexus? Or is Mia my god, touching my body and helping me uncover what the hell it is I feel within me? Is God a woman or a man or a hermaphrodite? Is there one god or two or several? There must be a God. If there is, can I touch it? Can I feel it? Can I scissor it like a pair of lesbians on coconut oil? Can it run its hands down my chest and touch me and make sweet love to me or do I just have to make a leap of faith? There must be something more than this, Elska. God must be in the flesh otherwise James is going to be pissed.”

“God, I just love TACOS! Crunchy tacos with meat, beans, cheese, cilantro, lettuce, guacamole, pico de gallo, and sour cream. I had about seven of those just now with some rice and needless to say, poke a fork in me.”

“Swedish and Danish meatballs are everything. Bit of tomato sauce and accompanied with potatoes and princess cakes? It's like I am back home.”

“This sucks.”

“My ass needs to be chased right now. And I need a cup of tea.”

“This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.”

“Milk in tea is complete and utter sacrilege. Yech.”  
“It's about as gross as how gefilte fish or pig's feet smells when someone drops it upon the floor. NASTY!”  
“Or warm beer. I'd rather drink old vodka and have my gentleman vegetables forcibly removed, thank you very much.”

“Sometimes, when I am taking a shower, I stand under the head and let the water cascade over my head and I feel like the time I stood before the ocean when Mia and I were riding up the Oregon coast. I feel so comfortable in warm water. Hell, I feel comfortable in cold water. Sometimes I really do believe I am a merman and I lose myself in the pleasure of softness.”

“I look down at my waist now and I can only see about half of my feet. I put on a shirt just now, one that hung off of my body rather loosely about a year ago and found it hugged my body in a rather snug fashion. I lay down on the bed and felt it ride up my waist a bit. Something is… terribly, terribly wrong here. But also terribly, terribly right. I was going to be another svelte, slender tennis player and now, here I am, playing drums and feeding myself the most delicious things I could only ever imagine before. I can see how Mia describes me as 'chubby', given everything is only a bit bigger and fuller rather than hanging off of me. Actually, you know what? This is... this is quite nice. Yes. I like this. I like the feeling this presents to me. I feel kind of... sexy, actually.”

“Think I will grow a beard. It's a good look for me. You know, I don't look so 'pretty.' Mia likes it, too. And I know how it utterly tickles her whenever I give her a little eating of the out. I can only imagine what it must feel like against those soft lips.”

“I hope Ben Shepherd's having a good evening, and I hope he had a good day today, too. Krist, too. And Layne. And the gentlemen of Green River, including Mark Arm. And Mark. And Trent. They're all sexy men. So sexy. So sensual.”

“I wanna drink. I wanna kiss. I wanna eat. I wanna fuck. Heh, that's a funny word, 'wanna'. Like puke or smock or nitwit or blubber. Blubber! Megaphone! Cucumber! Rancho Cucamonga! Warren Cuccurullo! Car keys! Chicken! Chicka chicka wow! Megadeth, Megadeth, we wanna some Megadeth!”

“This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.”

“My stomach is an utter beastie now. I mean, I smell BACON, for fuck's sake, and I just about half my body weight in muffins today. Plus pizza. And a shit load of tacos. And some heavy cream. Surprised I only have but a little round belly and I am not morbidly obese at this point.”

“I have the weirdest desire to kiss Ashley right now. I cannot explain it. But I feel like she would make a great kisser. Have her hands touch my love handles as I hold her back against the wall. Give her a bit of velvet tongue before I stick it right into her høle. God, what is WRONG with me.”

“Whøever sticks the høney up to the høuse gets the høse.”

“This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This. Sucks.”

“God, jeg vil bare røre ved! Min mave er virkelig fuld lige nu og helt ensom. Jeg har brug for en gnidning, og min egen hånd kan kun gøre så meget, fordi jeg alligevel vil ende under mit talje og bevæge mig om mig som en peberkværn. Fanden… jeg savner de små kærlighedsbider, som Mia kan lide at give mig på min mave. De små bider, der er skridt længere end hickeys, hvor hun vil sutte på min hud og så altid forsigtigt tage en nibble, og så vil hun give det en slikke, og hun vil tage processen og løbe rundt. De gør min tæer krøllet og min pik hårdere end cederen udgør natbordet ved siden af mig. Bare at mærke hendes tænder mod min bløde hud sender rystelser op på ryggen og ned til knæene. Følelsen går dobbelt, når jeg er lige så fuld som jeg er lige nu. Jeg lægger på ryggen med lagnen omkring min talje og stoffets følelse gør mig kun meget for mig. Ser ned på rundheden under din rygsøjle, Elska—jeg har brug for den lille smerte i min fornøjelse igen. Jeg har brug for rushen. Jeg har brug for at føle det som om, når jeg føler, at det er svært at spille og svede som de dage med metalradiatoren spreder varm luft ind i det gamle rum. Bitter søde som livet selv. Gamle ost with a big bowl of apple sauce AH!”

“Nogle gange ser jeg på mit eget ansigt, og jeg vil smugke mig med min hånds bagside og derefter en telefonbog. Jeg ser opustet op. Jeg ser fedt ud. Jeg ser overvægtig ud. Så rundt… Kig på alle disse jævne kin! Der skal være omkring ti af dem nu! Nej, der er en busk af dem! Følsomheden i min mave gør ingenting for at hjælpe med. Hvorfor spiser jeg så meget? Åh, højre. Det er fordi jeg elsker at spise. Jeg elsker at føle det inden i min mave og det begynder at vise sig på min krop. Men mit ansigt… ugh. Mit ansigt er for rund og fed og dejlig at elske.  
“Jeg må indrømme til dig, Elska, og vær venlig at holde det mellem dig og mig. Dybt ned, jeg føler mig grim og uønsket. Jeg undrer mig over, hvorfor en dejlig pige som Mia tager sådan en ivrig interesse for mig, når dette er alt, der er med mig. Jeg ved, hun ser skønheden i mig. Jeg ville ønske jeg kunne se, hvad hun føler og ser for sig selv. Suk. Jeg vil stoppe med at hate mig selv og begynde at føle kærlighed, virkelig føle kærlighed til mig selv. Jeg vil være lige tilbage—jeg skal passe på noget.”

“Husk da jeg sagde håndbevægelser er mine bedste venner, når jeg er alene? I meant that. Jeg gjorde peberkværnen, Elska. Jeg tog min venstre hånd og lagde den på toppen efterfulgt af min højre hånd i nærheden af hovedet og gyrede som om krydder en bunke røræg. Needless to say, I used a tissue and then I started gyrating my hips. It's like that Beatles song, 'I get by with a little help from my friends…'”

“Må vi finde Gud i kødet. Godnat.”


	77. Chapter 77

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Well, I said hello and I said hello,  
> and I asked, why not, and I replied, I don't know.  
> So we asked a simple black bird, who was happy as can be,  
> and he laughed insane and quipped Kahlil Gibran,  
> and I cried for all the others till the day was nearly through.  
> For I realized that God's a young man too.”  
> -“The Width of a Circle”, David Bowie

“Note to self—don't ever eat so much prior to falling asleep again. It makes me want to eat Twinkies even more come the morning.”

“Anyways, I woke up earlier and I lay flat on my back so I could examine the bed sheet hugging my body. I am growing rounder, Elska. I took a glimpse down to my waist to find my waist obscures my thighs, my knees, and my ankles even whilst lying down. Even lying down I can not see my legs anymore. I know I am into the hundred and seventy range. I'm huge. I feel it.”

“I sat up and felt everything in the middle of my body pooch out into this round... thing. I took off the sheet to see the bottom of my waist, still tight but quite thick. If I reach forward to touch my toes, it gets rounder and fuller, and so I leaned back to rub my belly because she's not here right now. My skin is so soft, holy Christ. It's like massaging Egyptian cotton.  
“I don't jiggle, though. I'm not that fat yet. Not yet, anyways. But I pat my belly and I get a bit of a quiver and it makes a little 'pop' noise at the impact of my hand. I am just... quite round.”

“The day I cut my hair short is the day I go batshit insane. Granted, there are days I just want to completely shave my head because the hair won't stay the fuck out of my mouth but—I love my long hair. If there is one thing I will give my round face credit for, it's the fact it bears long hair rather well.”

“There is something strangely satisfying about holding onto the bottom of my waist and jiggling it a bit. It's just... ffffff.”

“All of the weight has spread about my body. Maybe that's why my belly, as round as it is, really is not that fat.”

“You should see my thighs. Hot damn.  
“They're like fucking tree trunks up by my hips and my ass and then they taper down to my knees. Fuck. I'm thick. I am officially thick.”

“I want someone to touch my chest and give me love bite hickeys on my gut.”

“I wanna be tied up and force fed pandekager. I wanna be tied up at the ankles and be force fed pandekager and Danish meatballs. I wanna be a merman. A chubby little merman.”

“I want my thighs touched, and I want to asphyxiate (asphyxiate? Is that correct?) someone with my thighs. I want my ass slapped.”

“So I was just looking at myself in the mirror and saw my face more or less goes with my body now, so there's that.”

“I am but a mere twenty three years of age, but I am aging rather quickly. Capricorns do age quickly after all. But at some point, may I swallow my pride and not my tongue and make love to God, make love to myself. My wish is to make love to myself. I want to stare at my reflection and not scowl at it.”

“I took a seat at the table outside to take another view of Pike's Peak and I neglected to put a shirt on, oh shit balls!! But the sun came streaming down on me and it felt quite lovely on my bare chest and belly. Oh… I want to be around Mia again."

“The waist of my pajama bottoms feels almost akin to a leather belt now, albeit one too tight for me. A leather belt! Mia has her nice rope, but I am hell bent for leather. Tie up the leather around my waist and my ankles and sit on my face, darling. No, better yet, tie up the leather around my waist and my ankles and force feed me pandekager. My wish is to be force fed. I eat too much pasta one evening and there's a plate of princess cakes before me. I resist it, but I also want it and I need it. Feed me—feed me, darling. Feed me and love me and set the beast in me free. Because food is love, love in the pit of my stomach and in the flesh. God is in the flesh.”

“So I went downstairs to get a bit of continental breakfast because apparently it's all paid for by management and the record company. All paid for. All you can eat. What do you think I did. Ha. He he he he he he he, ha.”

“I. Have found. A deep, profound, almost primal love. Of biscuits and gravy. Oh. My God. Fuck shits, I love it so fucking much that I can't hardly say anything other than fuck.  
“Fluffy biscuits straight out of the oven and covered in a blanket of gravy that has pieces of sausage mixed inside of it, fuck. Fuck, put this dish in my belly and make it my wife.”

“Kirk laughed at me eating at all the biscuits and gravy and he goes, 'I think Lars is getting kind of a fetish for warm sorta fatty foods, like I think he likes to take those sorts of things to bed with him, I dunno.'”

“After the biscuits and gravy, I had sex with a muffin again, a blueberry one with a knob of butter on the inside. And then I made it into a threesome with a plate of crepes with a bit of grape jelly smeared on the insides. And then I made it into a full on orgy with another plate of biscuits and gravy. Poke my belly with a fork and call me a Danish piggy.”

“I love the feeling inside of my stomach, and I love putting on a button up shirt and having the buttons in the middle of my body nice and snug while the shirt tail kind of flares out. It sounds like a lot, but it really is not. I fill myself to the point of absolute fullness but I don't feel 'stuffed'. I still wish for a rub and a tease. And by a rub, I mean with another person. I need that other hand to tickle me and pleasure me.”

“I went to sound check earlier to test out the drums for tonight, and I overheard James talking about somebody blitzed out on their tits on crack codeine and barbecuing a thirty pound pig right outside of the venue. According to him, they were butchering the shit out of the thing, too, putting the head on a spit and then the body on another spit and suspending it over a fire. Ghastly image, and thankfully, I never got to see it. But... it weirdly made me have a hunkering for a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich??”

“You could probably only talk me into cocaine to help me lose weight and... nah. Deprave me of food that way if the thought ever comes about. But now, beer on the other hand, does the belly quite good.”

“Bloody hell. Bloody heads. Bloody fingers. Bloody backs. Bloody assholes. Bloody balls. Bloody cunts without a trace of sugar to be found. Yum.”

“Oh, get off your fucking cross for fuck's sake. Jesus fucked a prostitute, for fuck's sake, and you wanna smack the backs of my hands if I even so much as think as clasping them to my waist in repose? For fuck's sake, UGH!”

“I just ate two big rotund BLT sandwiches—with lots of bacon—a cup of vanilla yogurt, a nice ripe banana, some black berries, and a shit load of the same tacos I had last night. Let's do this!!”

“Never broke out a sweat. Again. It was a bit warmer this time around, too, so that makes it even more strange. Huh.  
“Actually I have got a little glow 'round my face, like under my eyes and on my chin and down the sides of my neck. But I look more like the sun than I do the drummer of a rock n' roll band who was just thundering away at my kit.”

“There was a point in which James asked the audience if everyone was looking forward to our new album and to raise their hand if they said 'yes.' Well, some wet blanket bitches raised their hands—or their dicks rather—out of spite and everyone booed. Luckily, James picks it up and goes 'did you raise your hand just because you meant it or did you raise your hand so you could be a twat?'”

“I am laying on my back right now with my feet upon on the wall over the head board. I feel like the soles of my feet should be stuck to the wall in some way.  
“Look at my hair, how it fans out from all sides of my head, in all of its wavy strands with a few tangles thrown in. I just showered so everything is soaking wet. I am wet. I am moist. I am horny and I need a little something to nosh upon because I'll chase something down and eat it with my own two hands otherwise. And I still need a trim on my bangs!”

“Stop calling me a girl or I'll kick your ass.  
“I'm a boy, for god's sake. Shit, if I was a girl, I still probably could kick your ass, except I would have more bag in the butt to sit on your face and thump it down right into the grass, you ass sucking monkey fucker!”

“OH, PLEASE, LET ME HAVE A PIECE OF CAKE! I JUST WANT A PIECE OF CAKE! EVERY GOOD BOY WANTS A PIECE OF CAKE FOR HIMSELF BECAUSE HIS SWEET BAKER IS NOT AROUND TO MAKE HIM A CAKE AND STUFF HIS FACE WITH IT. BUT HE'S HUNGRY FOR CAKE! SO, SO, SO MUCH! RED VELVET, CHOCOLATE, MARBLE, ANYTHING! AH!”

“Jesus mother fucking Christ.”

“Brownies? Brownies.”

“Hell.”

“Fuck being thin. Give me the roundness my body was made for. If I am going to be like one of the drummers from ten, twelve years ago when I was just a little fertilized egg inside of my mum's belly, then so be it. At least everyone will look at me as the drummer of Metallica and not some other dude wrapped up in spandex, sticking his head into the ground and yelling 'YEEE AHHH!'”

“Hell's bells!”

“What if I eat so much ice cream that I start up at the summit of a hill and roll down? Would I roll down easily whilst upon my side or no?  
“What if I did that with Pike's Peak? Or Mount Rainier? Ehh, I would perhaps have to go to the hospital if I even thought of doing that to Rainier. Or Mount Hood for that matter. I am not that big yet, either. I am not Prince Hamlet.”

“I wanna draw my stomach.  
“I just did! I drew my feet at the ankles down, too. With the pen! I drew my feet with a pen! A pen!”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Satan. God is in the flesh. God is in the sinews and the cells of a human's flesh.”

“Words cannot sum up my love for football. And by football, I don't mean the American nonsense. If you play a sport in which you have to wear a helmet, you might as well be riding on a bucking bronco or something with wheels. No, I mean—football. Actual football. Actual football where you kick the damned thing and even thinking of touching the damned thing with your hands gets you thrown out, fucker.”

“Excuse me, but I am just so unbelievably touch starved right now, I almost cannot bear it. I need her hair in my mouth, and her hand on my crotch, and my arms around her waist. Hang on, Elska. I will be right back.”

“So I just stood in the mirror, buck naked, and doodled the outline of my body with the little pad of paper they give you here in the hotel room and the pen I am using to write inside of your pages. It's rough, and I swear, visual artists have more balls than James and Kirk put together, but I did it. I exorcized that part of me, and I feel like I have released some part of me that had lodged itself in between the bones of my rib cage. I have done more for myself in those twenty minutes, standing there, and staring at myself, in all of my obscenity and examining all of the hair upon my body, from the sprigs on my chest all the way to the happy go lucky trail down my navel to the place that makes everybody go 'ya-ya', with nothing more than a black pen. I was holding the pen. I was holding the pen! I was holding the pen and nearly screwed it sideways!”

“It's so nice to say horrible things to someone who doesn't care about what I have to say.  
“Well, actually there is one. His name is Dave. Mia is definitely up there, though. Her and her pretty little Hispanic cunt with the ability to fuck me and fatten me up and help me question everything.”


	78. Chapter 78

“Shhh, don't tell anyone this, but—I kissed Jason. On the mouth. I have no idea if he liked it and he tasted like unsalted butter. Or was it a dream? I don't know. Either way, I do know he likes a little peck on the cheek. Then again, who doesn't?”

“Fare thee well, Denver—we shall meet again. All of your bars, your fresh drinks down below, and all of your gastronomic endeavors. And when we do return, my stomach will be enlarged enough to house your beloved Pike's Peak in it. He he he he he.”

“I am sad, Elska. And it is not because we are leaving Colorado and flying over the Rocky Mountains once more to land in Salt Lake City, but because the plane does not serve drinks. There's food—oh, is there plenty of food abound. I had breakfast prior to check out time but those little crustinis they have here in first class look so yummy. But a drink is a drink and I'm dying of thirst. I have been dying of thirst since we left the hotel two hours ago. I had a drink of water when I awoke this morning, but that was it.”

“If you are wondering, yes, I have taken the pen and the little pad of paper with me out of the room. When we mosey our asses back to Oregonia, I am showing that little drawing to Mia as a little lucky charm for her little baking thing. A little Lars right from little Lars.”

“Unless you hit me right in the face with a brick proclaiming that you are truly checking me out because you find me sexy and not for the sake of checking me out, I have no idea if these forty pounds were in vain or not.”

“I have this habit now of holding my journal right up to my chest while I am writing. I put my knees up against the back of Jason's seat so my head is down by where the middle of my back should be on the seat. I don't want anyone to see me writing this but I also want better penmanship than whatever bullshit I am writing with right now.”

“Fuck, I need a drink. A beer, a little shot of vodka, SOMETHING.”

“Little—and by little, I mean smaller than me; I thought nobody was smaller than me—Jewish American boy in a yamulke just pointed at me and mouthed 'shalom' to me. To be fair, I thought he said 'shut up' and so I gave him a little wink and now everyone in coach wants to take Deep Purple pendant around my neck and shove it in my ear.”

“James has fallen asleep and I have to pee. Badly.”

“Don't tell Mia this, please! But I cried myself to sleep last night. I just lay there in bed, on my side, with the sheets wrapped around my body, and then I started crying. I must confess: I felt afraid. Scared. I am supposed to be brave because I am a young man but when I buried the side of my face into the pillow, they merely came to me. I am so scared of the future, Elska. I have no idea if we are going to go anywhere as a band because last night, the crowd was quite a bit smaller than the one before and all James and Kirk wanna talk about is where and when they're going to fuck Ashley and the Bennetts next. I thought about getting out of bed and visiting Jason but he was asleep, and I fell asleep after a couple of minutes. I also looked at myself in the mirror again this morning after I woke up, and I saw what my body had become, and recoiled a bit. I don't want to ask Mia to fix me because she has her own bullshit but I can't help but feel like crawling on my hands and knees for her and begging her like I did my grandmother. Except I am not asking for a drum kit. I am afraid, Elska. Deathly afraid.”

“If writing something in Danish equates to hiding something, then jeg ønsker at være fyldt så fuld, indtil jeg har mit eget tyngdekraft felt.”

“Der er kiks og sauce på dette fly, og det er overflødigt at sige, at jeg føler, at det er nødvendigt at kvæle.”

“Er der spiser at fylde et hul sundt?  
“Hang på, hæng op, sikkerhedskopiere… hun fortalte mig, at jeg var kærlighed. At jeg er lavet af kærlighed. Og ja, når jeg føler behov for at spise, er det at hjælpe mig. Så ja, jeg fylder et hul, men af en anden grund.”

“Come on, James, wake up! WAKE UP!”

“Forget flatulence for a moment: I feel like James will come to a point with his snoring in which he will wake the dead and make Mount Hood tremble with more fear than the sight of the St. Helens explosion.”

“Okay, I finally managed to climb over him and creep my way back to the bathrooms and—  
“Fewer things in life are as simplistic and yet warming from the inside out as grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. I swear, every culture, no matter how arrogant and driven it may seem, has a vein of humility embedded somewhere inside. Every culture has its comfort food: Americans have macaroni and cheese, the French have ratatouille and Napoleons, whereas we Danes have a shit ton of butter on everything, even milk. Every culture has a fried pie, too.”

“Jeg spiser at fylde min mave og udfylde mig selv. Men der er faktisk noget andet, noget mangler…”

“I want Mia to come right on my belly when it's full. I think that would be far more satisfying than, say—giving me a handjob or a beej. Like she'll stuff my face silly, all full of her bakely goods from her little show after our little string of little shows and then sit on my waist and get all randy as she pinching my nipples. But there is something so unbelievably sexy about the thought of her bacon sandwich pressed against my Copenhagen cream puff.”

“I have this desire to move to New Orleans. Somewhere in this gaping black hole inside of me is a ravenous creature. That creature has emerged itself out of me in the form of forty pounds, but I want to take it to the next level and enact in the manner of a centuries old vampire borne out of the loins of the Middle East. My loins on the other hand, are as inflamed as a dusting of cumin upon a pastele straight out of Mia's oven. I am a prince after all—but I am not Prince Hamlet!”

“When I see Dave again, I am going to ask him if we can go to the nearest skate park and shred. Shred 'til the cows come home. Shred until the kids can see my hair flaring behind me like an octopus. Shred paper? Shred paper. With all four of those tiny plastic wheels.  
“The hell do you think I meant?”

“I smell gravy, but there are no biscuits. My tummy is so lonely right now. So very lonely…”

“Sorry, I fell asleep.  
“Anyway, I'm really beginning to grow a beard now, Elska. It's a mere stubble on my chin and along my jaw, but it is coming in. I simply cannot wait until I see Mia again and kiss her and get her all tickled. Coochie coochie coo, as I have said once before. It's coming in and so will she.”

“I wish I could feel what Mia feels towards me. Seeing my body at her very whim and feeling the arousal she feels for me.”

“Don't look now, Elska—but the stewardess just looked at me with a little smile on her face. She did not have a brick in her hand so I cannot be for sure. She is a lovely woman indeed: black hair, dark eyes, and pale skin. Little heavyset, but that's okay. There's nothing wrong with a little meat on the bones, if I might say so myself. She stooped over on the other side of the aisle and figure I caught a glimpse of her ass. There is a great part of me that wants to reach down my jeans and touch myself, but I have no napkins and the boy in the yamulke keeps looking over at me from the other side of the aisle because I still have my knees up against the back of the seat.”

“Feet don't fail me now.”

“I caught myself thinking about Chris Cornell a mere moment ago. Oh, what a beautiful man! Those ethereal tendrils of wavy hair flowing down from his head and that soft figure of a face staring back at me with those evocative eyes. That lithe body wearing nothing more than a bit of flannel and denim and large shiny black boots. His voice is utterly ethereal to hear in person. I hope that if and when we have another bit of time off again, we can see Soundgarden in action once more. And I hope that Mia, Ashley, and the Bennett sisters are with us, too.”

“Feet and ankles don't fail me now.”

“I wonder if they caught Doorknob, the bastard who broke Marcia and Sonia's door panel and the doorknob, and broke the window in their house. I wonder who would do such a thing? And Kirk is as clueless as any of us, too. I doubt James and Jason know anything about it, either.”

“So I started talking to the boy in the yamulke because he is absolutely bored out of his wits and he wants to be a writer when he grows up, how sweet! I told him I was from Denmark, and he told me I speak better English than he does, but on the other hand, he threw out some words at me that completely went over my head. So I talk real good in comparison to him.”

“Salt Lake City is a strange place. And by strange, I mean there is still no beer. Or vodka, or anything. Wah.”

“Jason and I went to a place that serves chips and salsa but no margaritas. The margaritas they do have have no tequila in them whatsoever. I mean, really. That's more absurd than Marcia and Mia baking cakes without sugar or butter.”

“In other news, I have also developed a very sexy, very torrid love affair with butter. Biscuits and gravy is my spouse but butter is my on the side sexy sensual girlfriend waiting to caress me around the waist. I always have loved butter as on par of being who I am, but the thought of it is getting me so undeniably hot right now. When Jason wasn't looking, I smeared a little bit on my salsa and needless to say, I am what you would call 'man wet.' I hope—I hope, anyways—that Mia and Marcia have a couple of baked goods which are loaded with butter because I need them.”

“There are two international languages of love here on planet Earth: music and food. Music is the loveliest, but food is the most subversive because music doesn't go to my potbelly.”

“Fucking hell, I am so THIRSTY.”

“While Jason and I were in the restaurant, I thought of Mark Lanegan, the man who salvaged Mia and me from that weird little part of California. He was a redhead, too! Oh, redheads!”

“Also whilst in the restaurant, a short little chick about my age checked me out. Again, she did not have a brick in hand, but she was one of those women with the kind of beauty that just sears. Black hair and pale skin like the stewardess, but withholding a smoldering, intense, raw beauty that knocks a guy like me to his knees. Think the kind of beauty that induces a wet dream of epic proportions. I thought about running after her to get her number but our driver pretty much grabbed me by the underwear and the hair, and tugged me back into the back seat of the car. Fuck!”

“Kirk, you filthy mother fucker. Keep your fingers out of my butter cream. If I am going to serve you some cake, I shall smear some in that hair of yours. That frizzy black hair all covered in cake batter and butter frosting, oh ho ho!”

“I think all humans are beautiful, especially those who remain authentic to themselves. So beautiful in fact that my wish is to make love to the whole entire human race. If I could, I would.  
“Then again, on the other hand, why am I not beautiful? Why can't feel that way about myself? Why can't I look at myself and be in awe of eccentricities when I'm not the one with them? Fuck. Fuck me.”

“The boy in the yamulke was so friendly and so kind to me. A man approached me and told me to button up my shirt… and it was buttoned up? Another gentleman looked at my long hair as if I was some crazy creep.  
“It is going to be a long weekend, Elska. Let's just tackle this place and then the rest of the Four Corners and then Texas so I can meander my way back to Mia's arms in beautiful Portland.”

“Superfluous. Prestigious. Ostentatious. Redolent. Kakorrhaphiophobia. Scintilla—as in 'I am a scintilla of a man.' Harbinger. Innocuous. Tandem. Furtive. Ubiquitous. Conflate. Katzenjammer. Felicity. Ailurophile. Napiform. Dulcet. Ebullient. Narcohypnia. Capricious. Unscrupulous. Nascent. Taffeta. Splendid! Some fancy words for you, my beloved Elska, xoxo, Lars.”


	79. Chapter 79

Lars knocked on the door panel as cold rain fell onto the hood of his coat.  
He had touched down in Portland after their last show before their break; he had boarded the first plane headed back to the West Coast, and at four o'clock in the afternoon, and yet he still arrived after the sun had disappeared behind the Coastal Range before the plane, and it wasn't until he passed through customs when he found out the day was the first day of daylight savings time; all of the clocks in the airport already read seven thirty when the time on his watch still read six thirty. Upon climbing into the next taxi at the airport's curb, a wave of fatigue swept over him from the time change and from a hard stint of the tour. It lasted a mere three weeks, but his body still felt drained and exhausted by the time he reached the front step: his knees quivered and he caught himself on the doorknob before he lost his balance. The extra thirty two pounds on his body started to feel more of a dead weight than something sensual and pleasuring for Mia's eyes and fingers. Even more taxing on his energy was the heavy overnight bag slung upon his shoulder; it weighed down on his back like an overstuffed book bag on a hungry student's back.  
Lars rubbed his eyes and knocked on the panel once again. Silence still, and then a soft click on the inside brought him some reassurance. Mia opened the door, wrapped in a silk bathrobe and her black hair waved out as if she had just climbed out of the shower; and he almost fell right onto her, but she caught him by the shoulders and followed it up with a light chuckle.  
“There he is! Oh, my—you're tired!”  
“I am what you would call 'beat'. Oof—” He ran the tips of his fingers underneath his bangs as he cracked a smile at her.  
“Did you just get back?”  
“I did. Kirk and Jason both went back to the Bay Area, and James had to linger behind another day to do an interview.”  
“Well, come inside, baby—set your things down for me and make yourself comfortable.”  
Lars staggered into the house before she shut the door behind him. He yanked the hood off of his head and then he rubbed his eyes again as he set down his things behind the doorway of the living room; he stripped off his coat before trudging towards the couch. Without a second thought, he collapsed on the couch cushions with a low groan of relief. He closed his eyes as he set the backs of his hand on his forehead and sighed through his parted lips.  
“Fucking time change, man, seriously,” he remarked.  
“I know, it's starting to throw me, too,” she agreed, shuffling about in the kitchen.  
“All the clocks in the airport were already set an hour ahead so when I got here, I thought 'did I overshoot it a bit?' Jet lag, thou art a heartless bitch.”  
She giggled as she shut the refrigerator door; he lifted his head from the arm of the couch to see what she was doing, but she remained out of his line of sight, hidden behind the edge of the doorway. The muscles in his feet and his ankles throbbed, and he had no desire to sit up to take off his shoes; he pushed off the left shoe using the tip of his right and let it fall onto the floor next to the couch, and then he did the same with the right shoe. He closed his eyes and let out a soft moan of relief.  
“Oh, mercy—”  
“Feel better? You can move your tootsies around?”  
“Hell yeah. You know, I was on my feet all day today from starting from about five o'clock this morning. Helping out the crew a bit, and having a couple of interviews standing up, walking around, and riding two buses—full buses, too, like there was nowhere to sit with both of them, so the four of us were having to stand near the front—standing in line three times, and then on the plane, there was nothing to put my feet up with or take my shoes off. I don't know how nurses do it, Mia.”  
She remained silent still; his first thought told him she was making him something there in the kitchen, but he had no idea given he could not see her, but he did hear the toaster make a noise.  
“What you doing?” he called out.  
“I had a hunch you were hungry, given how you are with airline food and whatnot, and given how tired you are, too—”  
“And you are correct,” he answered in a mutter under his breath; he set his head back down on the arm of the couch, never taking his hands off of his forehead.  
“Also don't ask me why—it's kind of complicated, but I am using a different pen name for the baking competition.”  
“Oh, yeah?”  
“Yeah.”  
“What is it?”  
“You are going to love it. This was courtesy of Mike and the woman in the adult shop up in Seattle, by the way. Lacey Roquelaure.”  
He lifted his head to see her peeking out the entrance of the kitchen with a glimmer in her eye.  
“Lacey Roquelaure—that sounds like a porn star name,” he stated.  
“Precisely!”  
He dropped his hands to his sides so as to lift himself off of the arm of the couch, but he was too exhausted to do much of anything other than lay there. But he knew what she meant right then.  
“Oh, I see,” he said as she ducked back behind the wall to finish up what she was doing. He rubbed his eyes again and shifted his weight there in the couch cushions.  
“Also—don't take this the wrong way, Lars,” she began as she stepped out again, this time with a plate in her hand, and a sandwich on top. The smell of toasted bread and fresh cheese came to him soon enough.  
“Hey, you know what this reminds me of?” he said, changing the subject; he knitted his knees together as he pulled his legs closer to him for her to have a seat.  
“What's that?”  
She handed him the sandwich, fresh lettuce and spinach, and slices of mozzarella, Brie cheese, and pepper Jack on crispy toasted wheat bread smeared with mayonnaise and brown mustard. He licked his lips at the sight of the plate, and then at her.  
“When I first came into the bakery. Think about it: I was on tour, had a little break, and—I walked into a place feeling tired and hungry and—a little bit horny. And then we slowly began seducing each other after that.”  
“Oh, no, don't tell me,” she lowered her voice even though they were the only ones in the house.  
“Hey, my feet and my ankles may be screaming at me right now but my dick is very much still intact and upholding its hotline to my stomach.” He took the plate and lay it on his chest so the crumbs from the toasted bread would not fall onto his shirt.  
“Did you lose weight?” she asked.  
“A little bit. Like, seven or eight pounds. I forgot to tell you, I—em—overshot it a little bit.”  
“Overshot it?”  
“Yeah. You know I changed my target to thirty five pounds, right?”  
“Yes.”  
She gaped at him.  
“You didn't!”  
“I did. Right up to forty pounds. I felt huge, darling. All big and chubby, and I have to tell you—it felt—” He paused for a brief moment, choosing his words with care. “—pretty—odd. I think it was because you weren't there with me to see it, too, but it almost felt alien to me.”  
“Well, of course, you're a small fun sized candy bar of a man. It must have felt like carrying around a big ol' jelly roll on your waist.”  
“It kind of—was. Like holding one of your raspberry danishes in flesh form. You got any liquor?”  
“Any liquor? Well, I have some tequila but it's all for the donuts on Wednesday. I have a bottle of wine in the other room, though.”  
“I'm not really a wine guy, but if that's all you have—gladly, darling.”  
She climbed to her feet and padded out of the room, and headed down the hall. Lars took the first bite of his sandwich: at the crunch of the crispy toasted bread, he felt famished, a feeling that came to him almost out of the blue; but then again, he had not a bite of food to eat since they checked out of the hotel, eight hours before. He sank his teeth into the sandwich more; he had reached halfway by the time Mia returned to the living room with a large olive green glass wine bottle in one hand and a corkscrew in the other. She placed the bottle on the side table at the other end of the couch and lifted a finger to give him another minute. He nodded his head and proceeded eating his sandwich; soon, he tasted the pepper Jack, a firm spicy kick right in the back of his mouth that sneaked up on him upon taking another bite.  
She returned with two large glasses, perfect for drinking a lot of wine.  
“I have had it a while so I am not sure how it will taste,” she confessed, holding onto the base of the bottle with one hand and prying off the cork with the corkscrew with the other; the cork popped off the mouth and she caught a whiff of the wine inside. She picked up one of the glasses and poured out rich dark red wine; she filled the glass about halfway before she handed it to him.  
He took a sip and coughed from the rich, hearty flavor, but he took another sip to wash down the lettuce and the toasted bread. She returned to her seat before him with a glass in her hand.  
“Anyways, what were going to tell me?” he recalled to the first thing she told him upon giving him the sandwich. She took a sip of wine herself and then tossed her wet hair back from her face.  
“I—hung out with the guys from Soundgarden. Marcia, Sonia, and I, all three of us. Trent and Jerry, too. Ashley wanted to join us but she was busy with school work.”  
“Oh? What did you do?”  
“They took us out to dinner to the restaurant up on the Space Needle. Apparently, they are trying to record their first album with Sub Pop—the record label up there—and Trent is vying for an album on his own rite, too.”  
“Trent is, too? Just—by himself? Solo?”  
“Apparently so, from what he says. He is calling his project 'Nine Inch Nails.'”  
“Wow! I hope he fucking owns it.” Lars set down his wine glass on the floor in front of the bottom of the couch before picking up his sandwich again.  
“I do, too! Jerry also wants to buy me a guitar.”  
“YES!” Lars tipped his head back and shot his arms in the air as if celebrating a victory. He then gazed back at her straight on.  
“Wait a minute, what's stopping him?”  
She rubbed the pad of her thumb against the tips of her fingers.  
“Oh, I see.” He picked up the rest of the sandwich and showed it to her.  
“Would you like a bite before I make swine out of myself?”  
“Oh, no, thank you, papacito. I made it for you after all.” She flashed a wink at him and he flashed her a smirk. He finished his sandwich in three large bits and then he reached down for his glass of wine, and took a large drink before she held out the bottle for him. He responded by holding the glass out for her; she once again filled it halfway with that rich red wine.  
“How are your parents?” he asked her.  
“Still not speaking to me.”  
“Shit, that's horrible.” He took a large drink in particular right then and the flavor of the wine coalesced with the warmth in his stomach. The muscles in his shoulders and the upper parts of his arms relaxed; he rubbed his chin and the lower side of his left cheek before taking another big swig from the glass. Before he could say anything, she poured another bit into his glass. He kept drinking and she poured one into the glass until he felt the warmth surge up his neck and over his face. She topped off her second glass before setting the bottle back down on the floor behind the arm of the couch.  
Lars ran his fingers through his bangs and the hair on the side of his head. Mia giggled at the dazed look on his face.  
“Hey,” she started, her voice low and smooth like the wine itself.  
“Hey what?”  
“I've got nipples on my titties as big as the head of your cock.”  
He hiccuped inside of his throat and flashed her a big grin.  
“Oh—mmm—oh, yeah?”  
“Yes. You know, we haven't seen each other in almost a month. You're tired, I'm going to be baking my butt off in a few days.”  
“We're—loaded up with wine.”  
“We've had some wine that's been sitting around for a bit.”  
“What—What are—What are you getting at?”  
Mia stood to her feet and untied the belt on her bathrobe, thus revealing her body, bare naked except for a pair of black lace panties on her hips. Lars gaped at her, not sure of what to think. His whole body relaxed from all the wine inside of him, and his energy had all but flagged upon arrival, but she stood before him bearing almost every inch of her skin to him. She lunged forward and suspended herself over his body; she placed the empty plate down on the floor before the base of the couch before she lurked closer to his face. He could smell the fermented grapes on her breath; the sight of her teeth in her mouth made him think of those love bites.  
“I want you—to fuck me, baby,” she whispered. “Fuck and grind me, daddy.”  
He groaned in his throat; everything felt so warm on the inside that it made him laugh.  
“Darling—skat—darling—I'm tipsy!” he hiccuped, eyeing her bare breasts hanging over his chest like a pair of balloons with hard needle like tips on the ends.  
“I know you are—that's why you are so perfect right now. Rosy faced, potbellied, and part of your hair fanned out from the side of your head—” She gasped as she caressed his face. “—and you're getting a sexy beard again, too, I see! But I have got you.”  
She kissed him on the lips—how he missed her kiss! But then she moved her lips onto the scruff on his face and his legs extended out from underneath her, and his socked feet stretched out into their points, as if he was a ballerina. She slipped her hands under his shirt to caress the skin on his belly, and then she lifted the bottom of his shirt to feel his chest. He relaxed for a brief moment, that is until she ran the tips of her index fingers around the rims of his nipples before giving him a gentle pinch. She bowed her head to kiss his belly once, twice, three times, before she held onto his jeans. He closed his eyes so as to better take in the warmth of the sandwich and the wine inside of his stomach. So much warmth inside of the middle of his body that it made his heart pound. He felt the fabric of his jeans and his underwear stretching, but not for long as she unfastened his jeans and tugged them down his thighs. She ran her fingers down the tops of his thighs before she tugged down the band of his underwear.  
He could feel her fingers running down his shaft towards the head.  
“Darling—darling—” he muttered out. He heard her take a deep breath, and then she put her lips around the head. He curled his toes, and the fatigued feeling in his feet and his ankles had all but disappeared. She pulled back, only to return her lips to a spot higher up on his shaft. She did it again and again, going higher each time as if suckling a popsicle. Then he felt the edges of her teeth scrape against him.  
“Oh—!” was all he could say; he popped his eyes open to look straight up at the ceiling before laying his head back down on the arm of the couch.  
“Did you like that?” she asked him, sounding excited but also as if she was choking on something.  
“Do it again!” he encouraged her, shutting his eyes again. She started at his head again and moved up, same as before, and then, as light as a feather, she scraped the edges of her teeth along the taut skin of his shaft. The alcohol in his system only made his heart pound even more inside of his chest.  
“Do it again. Do it some more! Come on, you little whore—give it to me—”  
She scraped him again and again, a rough but euphoric feeling he could hardly explain except for the low moans shooting out from his throat. He then felt her fingers running back along the tops of his thighs, a gentle feeling sandwiching the hard, prickly feeling along his shaft. He closed his mouth only to lick his bottom lip and follow it up with a groan from his throat. Her fingers crept up his hips and onto the soft roll of fat on his belly.  
His chest heaved from the light pain but his arms and legs relaxed at the gentle sweetness. It was such a strange balance, one that never made him reach the pinnacle of coming. She let go of his dick but she kept massaging him to bring the two of them closer to one another. Lars had no idea if they could call each other a couple but her hands there rubbing upon him made him rethink that.  
“I have missed you,” she whispered into his face.  
“I missed you, too—” he confessed, his speech slurring from the feeling and from the alcohol in his stomach.  
“Get ready for Wednesday, sexy boy—I am going to make you eat so much.”  
“I have been waiting for that, darling—” His speech slurred even more and he swore he drifted off to sleep right then.


	80. Chapter 80

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Burnin', burnin', all you can take.  
> Wheels are turning in the bed you make..  
> I'll take you over, you're tied at the stake.  
> Nobody loves you like the way I do.”  
> -”The Stake”, Steve Miller Band

Gray morning sunlight glowed over the beehive hairdo upon Sandra's head as she headed into the front gate of the fair grounds. She had wrapped herself in all black clothes with shiny black high heeled boots on her feet; the right side of her shirt bore a small line of embroidery reading “Smell the Magic – established 1979” in curled hot pink writing so as to resemble a neon sign.  
Lars figured her hair had grown out long enough to where she could brush it out before pinning it up off her neck for the long day of baking ahead. He meanwhile, had brushed his hair to where had it lost all of its deep embedded tangles; he ran a comb through his bangs so they would poof out later on during the midst of the day. Mia suggested he wear something with buttons on it, and so he chose a rich dark blue button down shirt: the third button pressed against the crease between his chest and his belly, while the shirt tail peeked out over the belt of his black denim jeans. Before leaving the blue and white house, he checked his reflection in the brand new mirror in Mia's bedroom and flashed himself a mischievous little smirk.  
She kept her arm around his shoulders all the way into the wide open fair grounds, across the fine layer of sand and straw which covered the pavement, and towards the row of long low buildings with dark green roofs at the far side. Sandra strode far ahead of them with a pair of burlap sacks over her shoulder and a cookie sheet tucked under her arm. Lars brushed part of his bangs out of his eyes at one point, and he peered up to the sky at the layer of striated clouds covering the sky. He could feel the rain on the crown of his head.  
“So where should we meet up afterwards?” he asked her as a black board entered their view on the other side of the pavement: someone had drawn a bright pink arrow and written the words “bakers this way” in white chalk.  
“How 'bout that little cherry tree right there?” Mia pointed to behind the black board, and at the short, squat black tree with fine dark green leaves and minute buds lined with bright pink. Lars flashed her a little smile.  
“Cherry—like a little something between your legs,” he lowered his voice to a near whisper.  
“Stop!” she giggled as she gave him a playful slap on the chest.  
“Oh, come on—I'm about to cram my face full of everybody's baking and maybe some French fries and big focking funnel cakes after not eating anything this morning. I should at least have some fun with it, especially since the bloody time change is still throwing me a great deal.”  
“Fun with it?” she echoed.  
“Fun with your clit,” he corrected.  
“Watch your mouth,” she scoffed, wagging a finger at him, “there will be children playing around here later on.”  
“Slow children at play—duhhhhh.”  
They reached the entrance of the building as she hushed him again. She let go of his shoulders and turned to face him straight on. He ran the tip of his tongue over the top of his bottom lip as she gazed into his eyes.  
“Go get yourself a drink,” she whispered into his face. He lifted his left arm to check his watch.  
“Get myself a drink? It's only a quarter to nine.”  
“A quarter to ten, baby.”  
“Oh. Shit. I keep meaning to set this but I keep forgetting to. Silly me. And it's only going to get sillier. Dave should be here soon enough.”  
“Dave's coming? Well, so are Jerry, Kurt, Trent, and Chris.”  
“Silliness out the wazoo?”  
“Oh, boy—!” She held onto either side of his face and, before leaning in closer, took in the scent of his cologne on his neck.  
“You smell good,” she remarked.  
“I do my best,” he shrugged. She ran her fingers through the hair on the left side of his head, all the way through to the wavy, slightly split ends.  
“I should rub melted butter through your hair when we have fun in the shower again,” she suggested.  
“Why melted butter?”  
“Smooth it and make it softer—you'll also smell like pancakes.”  
“Pancakes? Specifically pancakes? Not—popcorn or pound cake?”  
“Those aren't the only things that use a lot of butter.” She winked at him.  
“You just want me to be around a lot more butter,” he scoffed; and she grinned at him.  
“Okay, yes, you got me. But I know how you are with it, though.” She flashed him another wink before she planted a kiss unto his lips, a soft gentle kiss that carried a light taste of cream and coffee. He stared into her eyes as she stroked the sides of his face.  
“So this—fledgling cherry tree over here?” he repeated.  
“Si, querido.” She kissed him again before he could say another word, this time a kiss with more of a firm feeling. They locked eyes again for a moment before he spoke again.  
“What if we win?” he asked her.  
“I give you the time of your life tonight.”  
“What if we lose?”  
“I still give you the time of your life tonight, just without the purse.” She gave him a light pat on the lower side of his belly; his toes curled and the shaft between his legs firmed a bit at her touch.  
“Have fun, baby,” she whispered into his face, and followed it up with a touch of the tip of his nose. She disappeared into the building behind her and Lars stood there with his bottom lip twitching. He clasped a hand to his chest and slid it down the front of his shirt; he felt the plush, slightly round curve over the middle of his body, a curve she found so lovely and delicate, and one he was about to fill out even more with all manner of things. He was still amazed at the fact he was thirty pounds heavier and yet he had nothing more than a soft little belly and some extra flesh on his body.  
He spotted another door to his right and he knew that must be his way inside.  
He checked his watch again and remembered he needed to set it an hour ahead, but the smell of muffins baking beckoned him into the building before him. He wanted to resist it, but before he could even so much as fiddle with his watch, he felt his feet shuffle forward, and he strolled right inside.  
He found himself in a large bright room with a black and white checkered floor and a high ceiling that all but made him feel microscopic. To his left stood a long row of tables accompanied with bakers; behind them stood a long row of ovens, many of which were in the midst of baking while others were either pre-heating or lying dormant; meanwhile to his right were several tables with blue table cloths. Each one of them beheld a sign reading “reserved.”  
“Hi,” said a familiar voice next to him; Lars turned his head to the left to see Marcia standing over a white mixing bowl filled part of the way with a bright red batter and with a whisk in one hand.  
“Oh, hello,” he greeted her in a kind tone, smoothing his shirt.  
“Don't tell me you're a judge.” She gave the batter another stir, and then she tapped the whisk on the edge of the bowl before setting it down on the table top next to her.  
“I wish. I'm just here to eat and eat a lot of it.”  
“Ah! Resident taste tester.” Marcia snickered as she reached underneath the table for something: she took out a little wooden spoon from its hiding place. She dipped the head of the spoon into the mixture before her and, keeping two fingers right above the head, held the handle out for him.  
“This is all white chocolate with raspberry jam that'll go into some macarons so—have at it, Mr. Lars.”  
He took the handle and put his free hand underneath the head as he took a bite. The white chocolate was smooth as silk while the raspberry kissed the pad of his tongue; the sweetness felt like a rush of blood straight to his head and he could feel himself moving towards an almost automatic pilot setting. That is, until he clasped a hand to his chest and gaped at Marcia with a befuddled expression upon his face.  
“Holy shit, that's amazing.”  
“You think so? Like it's not too sweet or anything?”  
“No! It is a touch sweet like it could use a little bit of an extra bite, but I am positive that whatever aces you have up your sleeve will balance it out.” He flashed her a wink and she snickered again as he handed her the spoon.  
“Oh, no, you just keep that little thing,” she coaxed him. “You're gonna need it, big boy.”  
Indeed, he turned his head to the right and found every baker on hand had something ready to be tasted by someone non-biased. He had no idea of the criteria for judging but everyone seemed kind enough to him given the round shape of his face, his big eyes, and his accent.  
And thus, Lars couldn't help himself. He took one sample of everything from the tables on his left, granted with permission from everyone. But he tasted everything from frostings to meringues to fresh muffin batter. Once he reached the end of the line, and back to where he started before Marcia's table, he had tasted everything in the room and to the point his whole mouth was coated with everything sweet.  
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand which trembled from all of the sugar inside of him. He turned to Marcia, who had taken a seat behind her table for a short break.  
“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” he said aloud, pressing his hands to his hips.  
“Hey, that's Kirk's thing!” she cracked and they both burst out into laughter.  
“Anyways, you wouldn't happen to have like milk or something on hand with you to coat my stomach, wouldn't you?”  
“I don't, no. But I think if you look around, there are some things to drink outside, though.”  
He gave the head of the spoon another lick before stuffing it into his back pocket and stepping back outside: a light drizzle was falling, and he peered up to the gray sky to feel the cool moisture on his face and his head. He then strode to his left towards the pavement again, and he spotted a tall refrigerator pressed against the outside wall of the building, and he spotted two rows containing glass bottles of milk near the top.  
As he came closer, he noticed they were almost a dollar. He patted his jeans pockets and reached into the front ones for the loose change inside: two quarters, two nickels, and a dime. He left his wallet back at Mia's house.  
“I don't even know if I have a dollar,” he muttered to himself; he wheeled back around to head back into the building to ask Marcia for some change. He stepped back into the room right as she had placed a cookie sheet with a series of rounded dark red macaron cookies on the surface before her, and proceeded to spread some of her white chocolate and raspberry filling on the flat side of one of them.  
“Marcia, do you have any change?”  
“I think I do—hang on a second—”  
She set down the spoon and then she stooped over for her purse. He couldn't see what she was doing at first, that is until she lifted herself upright and counted out the coins in the palm of her hand.  
“I need a quarter and a half,” he said, taunting himself.  
“A quarter and a half?” she chuckled, never lifting her gaze from her hand, but she handed him two quarters.  
“Perfect! Thank you!”  
He darted back outside to the refrigerator for a bottle of whole milk: it slid down a slanted column on the inside and he caught it with one hand. He couldn't screw off the lid faster enough as his hands quivered from too much sugar inside of him. He took a large swig as the drizzle fell upon his head some more.  
He lifted the mouth of the bottle of his lips and gazed up at the fine rain falling upon him, and returned to the room yet again.  
Marcia held out a fresh macaron for him to taste: two rich dark red smooth cookies sandwiching that pale red filling. Lars took a small nibble on the top cookie and he was met with a kiss of raspberry flavor.  
“How is it, Lars?” she asked him as he took another drink from the bottle.  
“Too good! Too damn good!”  
He thought of what to write in his journal next, that is when he got another moment to himself.  
“Forget nipple piercings for a minute—I'm going to eat this whole fucking building!” He took another bite of the macaron, this time much bigger so as to taste the filling—beautiful! The filling resembled silk in its smoothness and combined with the cookies cut back on the sweetness, therefore it was not overbearing in its sweetness. As the crunchy cookie slid down his throat, something told him those eight pounds he had lost over the past few weeks were going to pack back onto his body soon enough.  
He proceeded on to the other tables, beginning with one woman's lime macarons and ending with heavy creamy Napoleons that reminded him of the ones he and Mia had had in Eureka.  
He reached Marcia's table once again and Mia and Sandra met him at the doorway carrying a brown paper sack and a cookie sheet in that respective order.  
“There he is!” declared Sandra with a smile.  
“Would you be willing to have our donuts soon?” Mia offered as she set the sack down on the table.  
“Soon? Nah, no thank you, darling. I am utterly stuffed. Those Napoleons I had at the end there were so irresistible and so filling.”  
She lifted her head to gaze on at him standing there before her with the wooden spoon jutting out of his back pocket and the glass milk bottle in one hand.  
“Hey, you're not sputtering,” she pointed out as Sandra set down the cookie sheet on the stove top behind them.  
“Yeah, I know.” Her eyebrows raised in shock.  
“Oh, no.”  
“Yes.”  
“Wait a minute,” she lowered her voice so he could step closer to her. “Wait—you mean to tell me you tasted everything in this room just a bit ago?”  
“Yes, I did. It was a great deal of sweet stuff, too. So much I had to get this thing of whole milk here.”  
She licked her lips as she eyed his waist.  
“Personally, I think you can eat a little bit more than that.”  
“You just want me to act like I did the other night with the wine,” he teased her.  
“Tipsy like?”  
“I wouldn't necessarily say 'like', but yes.”  
“Okay, maybe I do. Chico hermoso.”  
He nibbled on his bottom lip and thought about what he had written in his journal while on tour. He had been away from her for nearly a month, and they both missed each other in the process.  
“You described the Napoleons as irresistible?” she recalled.  
“Quite.”  
“You know what else is irresistible?”  
“Me?”  
“You.”  
He set down the milk bottle on the edge of the table before him to hitch up his jeans: the top of the waist band hugged his hips and the lower part of his belly.  
“Let me ask you this, darling,” he started again as she took out a bottle of tequila, a bag of flour, and a bottle of nutmeg from the paper sack, “are your nipples still as big around as the head of my dick?”  
Mia gasped at that.  
“Lars! Shhh, not while there are strait laced ninnies around.”  
“Oh, come on,” he scoffed, “they are going to know about these sorts of things sooner or later. Same with kids. I know I did when I met you.”  
She gaped at him and fluttered her eyelashes at him.  
“What—What are you saying?”  
The full feeling inside of his stomach had nothing on the light, fluttery sensation inside of his chest. He could feel his face growing warm at the very sight of her. She always made something for him and he introduced her to his little world. As far as he could see, there were no ulterior motives with her. Mia peered around to make sure no one was eavesdropping on them.  
“Oh, no. Don't tell me.”  
“Tell you what? I didn't even say anything.”  
“You hesitated. And you are flushing. That means you want to tell me something.”  
He licked his lips again as he thought of what to say.  
“—I have—” he began, “—been thinking about your baking so much. So much that—it makes me randy.”  
“Pfff, tell something I don't know.” She rolled her eyes at that as she took out a bag of chocolate chips followed by her bright red apron.  
“…I love—your—apron?”  
“Oh, really?” She unfurled it and threw the top string over her head so it lay over the front of her body: her breasts seemed much bigger while her waist had thickened. She carried her weight on a much nicer level than him, or so he thought. “What else do you love, big boy?”  
A part of him did not want to say this, at least not here. But he had put himself into this and he knew it to be true, especially on Sunday night.  
“You.”  
She had tied the strings behind her lower back when she gazed on at him, wide eyed and with a light blush to her brownish skin.  
“Mia—come closer, darling—”  
She leaned into his face to smell the cologne on his neck again; meanwhile, the aroma of muffins and cookies filled his nostrils.  
“Mia—will—will you—will you be my girlfriend?” he asked in a voice so small, nobody could hear him.  
She loomed before his mouth and closed her eyes.  
“Yes,” she breathed out, and followed it up with a kiss on his lips. She stared into his eyes with a soft expression upon her face. She was his girlfriend right at that moment.  
“Now, shut up and eat my donuts,” she commanded, still in that low voice.  
“How long do you reckon?” he asked her as a flash of fiery red caught his eye; Dave showed up.  
“Long enough for you to come for me.”


	81. Chapter 81

Lars stumbled out of the building, his face flushed and his heart hammering inside of his chest because the clock had been set inside of there. He couldn't believe it: he had asked Mia that question. He stood there right outside of the door and next to the cherry tree with his lips twitching and his face almost a bright red. Her voice echoed through his mind. Her touch haunted him. Everyone in there was a witness, even if they paid no attention, or if she and him kept their voices down low to avoid overhearing of any kind. It happened. He took a leap forward and made it happen whether or not he believed it or not.  
“Did that seriously just happen?” he asked himself. “It did! It did! It did, you idiot, it did!”  
Dave strode up to him in a long black coat and knee high black boots. Moisture from the drizzle overhead dotted the wavy tendrils of his red hair atop his head and all along his eyebrows.  
“There he is—” he said as part of his greeting, and then he knitted his eyebrows together at the sight of the reddish blush over Lars' face. “What the hell happened to you?”  
“It's—It's—It's—” He could scarcely speak. Dave raised an eyebrow when he peered behind Lars to the inside of the building, and at Mia and Marcia doing something. Lars dared not glance behind him, but he knew they were talking about him.  
“Did something happen between you and your little lady in there?”  
He swallowed and shuffled his weight, so oblivious to his surroundings that he had forgotten he slipped the wooden spoon in his back pocket: it fell out of his pocket and landed on the wet grass behind him with a soft thump.  
“What did you do?”  
Lars swallowed again; his chest heaved from the rush. The back of his neck grew warm from the pounding inside of his chest: he slipped one hand underneath his hair to lift it off of his skin, but it proved futile. Everything felt so warm; even the cool drizzle falling onto his head failed to cool him down.  
“You wanna go sit some place?” Dave offered, and Lars nodded, breathing hard through his parted lips. The two of them strode away from the baking competition to another long low building about a hundred feet away. A pair of benches stood beneath a low awning next to the green front door and before a row of short stubby evergreen shrubs. Dave took a seat first and then gestured for Lars to follow suit: he tossed his hair back from his face and his neck to show off the blush over his skin. The words still echoed throughout his mind. He had done it, but he had no idea where he was headed to with Mia. All manner of thoughts rolled through his mind, from perhaps having to leave the Bay Area for Oregon to whether or not she planned on staying in Portland if the girls from Smell the Magic won the competition.  
Dave pushed a strand of hair out of his face and then stuck his hand into the right pocket of his coat. He took out a small sandwich bag filled with tiny olive green balls covered in what resembled garland.  
“Want some pot?” he offered. “It'll probably help. Besides, there's no cops around.”  
Lars huffed and pushed his bangs out of his eyes again. His thoughts interfered with his words after all; he nodded his head in affirmation.  
“Yeah, why not. I'm going to be eating like fucking crazy today so I need something to make my stomach even more cavernous.”  
Dave then reached into his left pocket for a pair of white squares. He set down the sandwich bag on the bench between them, and then the squares on his thigh before opening the bag: the foul odor of the marijuana balls singed their noses but he still picked up a few of them with his index finger and his thumb. He lined them up in a diagonal on the first paper, and then rolled it by the corners like he would a burrito: he handed it to Lars and then moved onto the second one.  
Lars stared at the joint for a second before twisting off the ends to keep the marijuana inside of the paper. Once Dave had his joint rolled, he reached into his left pocket once more to take out his lighter, a small black marbled container with silver tips.  
Lars brought one of the twisted ends up to his lips; the short bright yellow flame shone before their faces, and Dave brought it closer to the other end of the joint.  
He closed his eyes as the paper and the weed inside began burning right outside of his mouth. He puckered his lips as if he had ingested a lemon peel, and inhaled to take in that smoke which smelled like hard boiled eggs straight out of a vat of warm water. He took it out of his mouth to breathe out the smoke right as Dave lit up his joint and took a puff; he stuck it into his mouth once again for another inhale. The sugar in his system lost its power and his heart beat slowed down as the cherry at the end of the joint brightened to a fiery red, fiery red much like Dave's hair.  
Lars coughed from the smoke drying out the tissues in his throat. He pat his chest with his free hand and then wiped the tears away from the corners of his eyes. He sniffled before taking another puff from the joint. Dave rounded his lips to a near perfect “o” shape and puffed out two small rings of smoke.  
“Dave, I need to tell you something,” Lars squeaked out, his throat tight from the smoke but his heart calmed down a great deal.  
“What's up?”  
He set down the joint on the bench before the sandwich bag and rubbed the tip of his nose with the side of his index finger.  
“I asked Mia to be my girlfriend.”  
Dave raised his eyebrows at him as he raised the joint to his mouth again for another huff.  
“And? What'd she say?”  
“She said yes.”  
He breathed another pair of smoke rings through his puckered lips.  
“Oh, right on, man! You guys totally deserve each other anyway. But—I don't understand. What's the problem, though?”  
“It was just…”  
“What?”  
“It was just before a shit ton of people in that little room back there.”  
“Oh, no, don't tell me you're regretting it.”  
“No. No—no—no—no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no… no… no… no, that's not what I am saying.”  
“Well, what are you saying?”  
“I feel like—we've could have confirmed it in a better place like—after the competition or at a show.”  
“Lars, look at it like this.”  
He lifted his head to look at Dave right as he took another deep throated huff from his joint; this time he barely parted his lips so wispy plumes of smoke escaped from his mouth and began the float up to the gray drizzly sky until the water dripping off of the edge of the awning forced it into dissipation.  
“You asked her to be your girlfriend. And she's heading into a competition, and she said yes. I'm telling you this because that is the word of confidence. She has confidence and faith from you—her boyfriend—to do well now. They're not going to lose now. I mean, how the hell can they lose now? Those donuts she makes are going to mop the floor with everything in that building. I mean—I hope they will.”  
Lars cleared his throat before picking up the joint once again.  
“I did taste everything in there after all,” he pointed out, bringing the twisted ended back up to his mouth.  
“Well, there you go. She has confirmation and possibly sabotage now—from her boyfriend—that she, her best friend, and their boss are going to kill in this competition.”  
“Sabotage? But I didn't do anything but taste it all. It was all delicious and sweet—so sweet that I needed a thing of milk.”  
“So that's what that bottle is. But aha! That's sabotage. You're totally non biased and you've got a huge gaping black hole inside your belly. It's like a double blind study on a drug of some sort. Except you didn't have anything to wash it down until the second time around. Did you taste her donuts at all?”  
“I didn't. I reached the end of the line by the time she and Sandra showed up. At least, I think I did.”  
“You didn't taste her donuts. In other words, you spared her from further judgment. Whereas everyone is going to be messing around with their recipes to please the judges. In other words, you—her boyfriend, just helped his girlfriend win the competition.”  
Lars turned his head to stare off at the baker's building before them: the cherry tree outside of the door stood before the gray with its small buds appearing to blossom with the spring drizzle, or so his marijuana laden brain thought. On one hand, he wanted Mia and the girls of Smell the Magic to win more than anything. But on the other hand, he wanted those other tasty treats have their moment in the sun during this show. He pushed the ends of his bangs out of his face before sitting upright and taking another huff from his joint.  
“Is that Chris?” asked Dave out of the blue.  
“Where?”  
He pointed out to their left at the tall wiry gentleman with long wavy black hair and wrapped in a leather jacket and dark jeans; his scuffed black boots made low clomping noises on the sand and straw blanket over the pavement with each and every step. Next to him was Jerry, his long blond hair fanning out from the back of his head; Dave shot up his head and waved to the two of them. Jerry gestured over to them, and the two of them padded towards the bench. Chris' face tightened into a frown as they approached closer. Jerry wrinkled his nose and then he nodded his head. Lars curled his fingers and rubbed his right eye with the side of his index finger: his throat felt dry and parched like sandpaper but he had to finish out the joint.  
“Is that pot?” he asked them once they came within earshot; they huddled underneath the awning before them.  
“You know it is, my good man,” answered Dave; he held out his smoldering joint for one of them to take. “Care for one?”  
“I'm driving,” replied Chris, but Jerry took the joint for himself. He closed his eyes as he took in a huff of smoke, and then he stuck it out and panted before handing it back to Dave.  
“Phew—wow. Is this the kind of pot that's got LSD in it?”  
“Nah. It's just the kind that knocks you on your ass if you smoke it enough in one sitting, though. Just ask our little Danish boy over here.”  
Lars fixated on the dribbles of rain water falling off of the edge of the awning before them. Every muscle in his body relaxed but the inside of his throat felt as though it was about to crack and break from dryness: he coughed and rubbed his right eye again.  
“I do have a little baggie back home with weed with some acid embedded in it, though,” Dave continued as he took another huff from the joint.  
“So how are you guys?” asked Chris.  
“I'm doing alright myself, personally,” replied Dave, blowing the smoke off to his left to miss the two of them. “Lars over here asked Mia to be his girlfriend earlier. And she said yes.”  
“Aw, God, that's too precious,” answered Jerry, coughing a bit from the smoke inside of his lungs.  
“Yeah, I think he was—overthinking it a bit. So I gave him a little something to help his ass relax.”  
“He-He—Help me—” Lars managed to sputter out, still fixed on the water over their heads. The three of them turned to look at him, puzzled.  
“Help you what?” echoed Chris.  
“It's to help me eat, too,” he finished his stray thought in a single breath.  
“Oh, right, that, too,” Dave added with a chuckle, taking yet another puff. He peered behind Jerry and Chris to see someone approaching them. “Hey, Lars, here comes—oh, no, wait, it's Marcia. But still, she's coming towards us. With—something.”  
Lars blinked several times, and sniffled, and rubbed his right eye yet again, and followed it up with a rub of the nose. Jerry and Chris stepped out of the way right as she came up to them with squinted eyes and spots of drizzle over the crown of her head, and the wooden spoon she had given him earlier in one hand. She chuckled at the sight of Lars: he couldn't see himself but he knew he looked ridiculous.  
“Have you boys been smoking weed?” she demanded as she came within earshot; she held the handle of the spoon with one hand and patted the head of it in the palm of the other.  
“Well, yeah,” he replied, nonplussed. “It makes one hungry.”  
She giggled at him.  
“What—What—What are you laughing at?”  
“You sound like you just inhaled a bunch of helium, Lars!” she exclaimed; she waved the spoon about as if it was a wand. “Anyways, it won't be too much longer until the voluptuous Puerto Rican donuts are all ready.”  
“Already?” asked Lars, clearing his throat.  
“Yeah. It's been almost an hour.”  
He peered down at his watch to see the time read a quarter to ten, and he raised an eyebrow.  
“But Mia told me it was a quarter to ten,” he insisted, clearing his throat; his voice lowered.  
“That was probably an hour ago,” she pointed out.  
“D'you set your watch?” asked Jerry, clearing his throat.  
“No…”  
“Well, there you go,” Marcia concluded with a Cheshire cat grin creeping upon her face.  
“There what I go?” asked Lars.  
“You think it hasn't been an hour, but it has,” Chris interjected.  
“I don't get it.”  
“Did I lie?” asked Dave.  
“Nope,” said Jerry.  
“Lie about what?”  
“Nothing. I didn't lie about anything. But the pot has knocked you silly.”  
“It's only going to get sillier—” Lars tried to follow along and he pushed himself into an upright position. He rubbed his right eye a fourth time, but then a low grumble emerged from the pit of his stomach. It was as if all he had eaten before vanished into nothing, and he hankered for something more, something else, something different. A wave of nausea swept over him and he felt weak on the inside.  
“Holy FOCK, I need to eat something.”  
“Eat a bunch of sugar and then get high as fuck? Yeah, I'm sure are just beyond famished.” Marcia gave the head of the spoon another pat in the palm of her hand; he peered up at her again right as the wide grin disappeared back into a regular toothy little smirk.  
“I could vouch for a donut myself,” Chris joined in.  
“There's only a few extra—” Marcia began to point out. Her words faded away while Dave helped Lars up to his feet; he staggered forward but caught himself by clasping a hand onto her upper arm, just missing her breast by less than an inch.  
“Whoa! Watch it there, big boy!” She wagged a finger at him while her tongue lashed out of her mouth and along the edges of her two front teeth.  
“Fella wants his donut, if you know what I mean,” Jerry cracked, and the five of them erupted into laughter. Dave kept his arm around Lars' upper back to guide him back to the baker's building: he blinked several times for his mind to return to clarity. The itch persisted in his right eye but he need not let something so trivial as an itch distract him from fresh baked goods waiting for him.  
Soon they were greeted by that warm aroma that Lars knew all too well, that combined smell of breads, muffins, cakes, cookies, danishes, and pastries kissing him right square on the face upon entering the door. The grumbling inside of his stomach only persisted as the door closed behind them. His hands and his legs began to tremble from the sugar and from the hunger: the whole milk had done its job and now he needed to eat something to put him at ease.  
Trent had taken a seat in a folding chair off to the left: he wore his black hair loose so it hung over his shoulders, and the pale skin upon his forearms shone almost like porcelain, bright pearly white under the ceiling lights. He flashed them a small but warm smile as they entered the room.  
“Hey, Mia, look who came inside for a bite to eat,” he called out before him; she stood up from behind the table with a smear of bright red upon the point of her chin. Her face lit up at the sight of Lars.  
“There's my baby!” she greeted in a jovial tone; Sandra appeared from behind the ovens with a pair of gray metal folding chairs, and she greeted them all with a smile.  
“Hello, boys! Two of you can have a seat here—I'll see if there are more chairs…”  
Trent helped her fold out the chairs for Lars and Dave to take a seat next to him while Jerry and Chris stood next to them with their hands in their pockets. Marcia followed Sandra back behind the ovens while Mia finished mixing up something for the donuts in a large gray metal bowl with a silvery spoon. Lars could see flashes of bright candy apple red on the inside of the bowl, and he knew it was that glaze. Her hair remained in place in her ponytail despite of working so hard in the past hour alone.  
Through his high, he recalled what Dave had told him earlier. He had helped her win on accident by giving her the faith she needed to perform, and by giving everything a blind taste test. His stomach started to grow angry with its growls and its grumbles, and in turn making him feel more nauseated, and his hands trembled. The baked aroma all around him was not helping matters inside of him, but he had to be patient given the timer on the oven stayed silent. He had no doubt she was going to win once the time ran out on the clock for them.  
Sandra returned with one chair, while Marcia darted to the oven to check the timer; she folded out the chair to Lars' right and Jerry and Chris both took a seat at the same time; they tried to push each other off while Sandra laughed out loud at the sight.  
“How much time on our donuts, Marsh?” Lars heard Mia ask.  
“About two more minutes, Mia.”  
“Okay, good. I'm nearly there with the glaze.”  
Lars licked his lips and swallowed. If the hunger wasn't dragging him down, the inside of his throat ached from thirst. He needed another glass bottle of milk, but he had used up all of his change and he need not risk falling right onto his face for more spare change from Marcia, especially since they were almost there in completion. He swallowed again: like trying down a hard tennis ball, one which had all of its fuzz rubbed off over time. His stomach ached and he swore he was about to fall right to sleep, but something kept him awake. Perhaps it was the smells all around him or the checker board floor before him, or something else but he hung on. He hung on for Mia.  
“Is he okay?” asked Marcia, pointing at him; out of the corner of his eye, he saw three more people in street clothes enter the room and head towards some of the other tables. But everyone at the station turned to look at him with stunned expressions upon their faces.  
“Oh, Jesus! Babe, you look sick!” Mia exclaimed.  
“Yeah, man, you look like you're about ready to pass out,” Dave added.  
“He had nothing but sweets earlier—tasting everything. Come on, timer—go off already!”  
“Yeah, get one of those donuts into him,” Sandra ordered.  
“And then one of you fellas get him like trail mix or something,” Mia added, smacking the head of the spoon against the edge of the bowl to rid of the rest of the glaze. “He needs protein in his belly.”  
The timer went off with a light ding! and Marcia put on her bright red oven mits to take the cookie sheets out, and lay them over the burners of the stove. Since they needed to rest for a moment, she blew on them, and on the one at the closest right corner in particular. Lars parted his lips and let out a long low whistle. He struggled to stay in an upright position; he lifted a hand to brush his bangs out of his eyes again, and his whole arm shook from the lack of nutrients. He felt his chest heaving as he watched Marcia blow on the one on the corner some more. She fanned it with her fingers and then she picked it up with her first two fingers and her thumb, and brought it over to the table next to Mia for glazing. He turned his head a bit at Chris counting dollar bills: he clutched the money so as to reach into his pocket for some loose change.  
Lars licked his lips and tried to swallow, but it was difficult from the hard, parched feeling inside of his throat and upon his tongue. He opened his mouth to grab Chris' attention; he lifted his head with his eyebrows knitted together.  
“Water—” he choked out, gesturing to his lips. Chris stopped what he was doing to pay better attention.  
“Water—”  
“He needs water, Chris,” Trent spoke out of the blue to Lars' right.  
“Oh, right, right, right! You were smoking pot and we all know how it dries you out—especially if you don't eat much—”  
“Think I've got a couple of bucks…” Jerry added, patting his jeans pockets for some change. Meanwhile, Mia spread a liberal amount of glaze over the chocolaty donut, the donut just for him. She held it on the tips of her fingers as if she held up a silver platter; and then she set down the knife to head towards him. She handed him the donut and he grabbed it, the starving little gremlin he had become for a moment. He was greeted by the chocolate and the spices: he couldn't get that little kick of tequila down his gullet faster. His chest heaved some more as he downed that first large bite; no sooner than it slid down his throat when he took another large bite.  
“Bakers! You have five minutes to finish!” a woman on the other side of the room declared.  
“Alright, you guys take care of my baby over here,” Mia commanded, jogging back to her spot on the table, “and Marcia and I will take care of business here—”  
Chris then climbed to his feet to cram some money into his coat pocket and clomped out of the room, the soles of his boots making loud, equine clomping noises.  
“So what's going to happen next?” Dave asked aloud; Lars paid very little attention given his eating the donut and tithing himself over until Chris returned with something more to help him. Once he had downed most of the donut, he leaned back in his chair again and sighed through his nose. The spices helped balance out the sweetness, and the tequila added that earthiness and the brief little spank in the ass that he needed. All he heard from Dave next was, “so over there?” and his pointing to the tables across the room.  
“Yeah,” Trent was saying.  
“Bakers! One minute!”  
Lars swallowed the next bite, a bite somewhat more difficult given the persisting dry feeling in the back of his throat. He watched Mia and Marcia pile a white porcelain plate with those exact same donuts: the former placed the last one on top so as to form a pyramid.  
“Okay, go! Go! Go go go go!” Marcia commanded as Mia picked up the platter. Lars then climbed to his feet right as she began to round the table.  
“Okay—here goes nothing.” She turned to him and swallowed; he had no idea if she could still smell the marijuana on him, but she still leaned to the side to kiss him on the lips.  
“Break a leg, darling,” he whispered to her and she darted to the tables for the display.


	82. Chapter 82

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “We can have some more.  
> Nature is a whore.  
> Bruises on the fruit.  
> Tender age in bloom.”  
> -”In Bloom”, Nirvana

“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.”  
Mia had leaned back against the edge of the table with the top part of her apron undone and lain upon the front of her shirt. Sandra adjusted the bobby pins holding up her beehive and remained close to her. Chris and Jerry congregated next to them, both with beers in hand.  
Meanwhile, Lars had downed a whole large bag of trail mix with three grains of cereal, pretzels, M&Ms, and raisins plus a large cup full of cold water, all courtesy of Chris. The shaking in his hands and his arms had stopped shaking so much, and his stomach mellowed out a great deal; he slouched in his chair to chill out in a setting that was otherwise growing tense. His shirt tail had risen over his waist a bit to show Mia a sliver of his belly to help calm her down, and he kept his cup of water next to his right thigh. Dave and Trent had left the room ten minutes before then to go pick up Layne at the bus station.  
Marcia, who had taken Dave's vacated seat to his left, leaned forward in the chair with her elbows upon her knees; she lifted her hands without lifting her arms to rub her face and run her fingers through her hair.  
“I am so nervous right now,” she confessed; Lars lifted his head to take a better look at her.  
“Don't be,” he advised her, taking another sip of water.  
“This could either bring us thousands of dollars or nothing, though, Lars,” she stated in a flat tone. “Not to mention, we have to make the winning half so it'll knock down the field from ten to five. If we get in, they will hand pick us by the show stoppers we have to make next in order to win the whole thing. Those are tricky as all hell because ours will incorporate Mia's donuts as well as the macarons.”  
“So you leave with what you came with if you win nothing,” he pointed out. “No wrong, no right.”  
“No wrong, no right, is that what you said?” echoed Chris, knitting his eyebrows together.  
“Lizzie Borden took an axe,” Mia repeated in a low voice, shifting her weight against the edge of the table, “and gave her mother forty whacks—”  
“I did!” Lars pointed at him with his free hand and showed him a smile.  
“Well, not necessarily,” Marcia continued as if he had never been distracted, “if we don't make it, we go head to head with the other four to get that fifth spot. It's a total blind taste test, too—kind of like what you did, except we've got actual bakers and chefs for our judges and not a random guy from Denmark. That's do or die time, my Danish friend.”  
“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks,” Mia repeated, closing her eyes. “When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.”  
“Mia, why the hell do you keep saying that?” demanded Marcia.  
“It's something to help keep me calm,” she replied, shifting her weight again and crossing her legs together. “Kim and Hiro from Soundgarden taught it to me. It's also part of my song writing process. I'm trying to write a song to help me get into the groove.”  
“James and I usually read books and watch TV but whatever floats your boat, my love,” said Lars with a shrug; he put his arms over his head to lift up the bottom hem of his shirt. She eyed his skin and the crotch of his jeans, and then his skin again. He glanced down at his shirt tail lifted up to where she could see the roundest part of his belly plus his navel. He couldn't touch himself because they were in a public place, but he need not to when Marcia glanced up to her and then back at him.  
“That's very becoming of you, Lars,” Sandra noted, slipping a bobby pin into the back of her beehive.  
“He's tryin' to take Mia's—oh, 'scuse me—Lacey's mind off of things,” Jerry cracked, taking a sip from his can. Mia licked her lips; he knew she wanted to touch him, to run her fingers over his skin and perhaps kiss him there. But all she could do was stand there muttering to herself.  
“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.”  
Two of the bakers, a young guy and a woman with a silvery bob of smooth looking hair, stood at the doorway in anticipation; he had their arms folded over his chest while she flashed Lars a sneer.  
“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks,” Mia repeated once again. “When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one. Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one. Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.”  
“Hey, can you stop saying that?” the guy scoffed. “We're trying to listen.”  
“Go stand over there if it bothers you,” Lars chided, gesturing towards the other side of the room. The guy took a step forward and pressed his hands to his hips in defiance.  
“What if I don't want to stand over there? What if I want to hear better?”  
“Well, that's on par of your garbage hearing,” he fired back.  
“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks,” Mia continued, lowering her voice to a soft mutter. “When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.”  
“I'm sorry, what?” The guy cupped a hand to the outside of his ear. “I didn't quite catch that.”  
“Oh, for fuck's sake.” Lars rolled his eyes. “I know you can hear me. I've met people like you in Danish school and you think you are so funny. But really you're just a twat.”  
“Danish school? You actually went to a school for danishes?” the woman joined in.  
“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.”  
“Oh, ha ha ha. I am Danish, thank you very much. Born and raised in beautiful Copenhagen, not like the garbage pile the two of you climbed out of.”  
“So that explains the big belly,” she jeered, gesturing at his exposed waist.  
“Oh, so you are going to mock the fact I love to eat? Very cute and original. Do me and the entirety of Scandinavia a solid and grow the fuck up.”  
“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.”  
“WILL YOU SHUT UP!” the guy shouted.  
“HEY!”  
Lars shot upright in his seat, and with so much haste that part of his hair smacked Marcia in the face. His shirt tail remained up over his belly but he didn't care. He held onto his water cup as he lunged towards the two of them like a rabid dog.  
“That's my girlfriend you are speaking to there,” he snapped. “And I will be damned as hell if you even so much as insult her. It's alright to denigrate me, but forget it if you want to go after her. Now get the hell away from us or I'm going to go primeval Copenhagen on both of your asses, you understand me?”  
The two people gaped at him, stunned. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before giving them a searing glare. They all stood there in silence until the woman's voice from across the room called out, “The ones moving on are Lacey Roquelaure and Smell the Magic—”  
Forgetting everything that had happened just then, Lars shot up from his seat and threw his arms around Mia: he shot his tongue right into her mouth and ran his hands up her back. A thought shot through his mind that he should unhook her bra right there, but they were surrounded by so many people. But then again, I could feel those two people still glowering behind them; he pushed back against Mia's body and the feet of the table scraped against the floor. She pushed him off of her and gaped at him in surprise.  
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” she hushed him, clasping her hands onto his shoulders.  
“What?”  
“Easy there, big fella. Besides, you'll have to wait until after this final part of the competition for a little fun.”  
“Chubby little Danish boy got cock blocked I see,” the guy behind them taunted; Lars turned his head to sneer at the two of them.  
“Hey, at least I actually have a cock I can measure out with something more than just the length of my hand,” he retorted, and the five of them burst out in a round of loud laughter.  
“Hey, at least I actually have a hand to use. But take it easy on the American condiments later on when you eat up another county fair hot dog—lousy fatass Eurotrash.” The woman laughed at that.  
“Those suck,” Lars taunted in return, tossing his hair back from his and Mia's faces; he then gestured at the woman. “Apparently she does, too, because she didn't bother with them, either.”  
“DAMN!” Marcia and Sandra yelped out in unison. They heard her say to the guy “let's get the hell out of here... they totally missed us anyway.” Lars shrugged before turning to give Mia another kiss on the lips.  
“Alright, break a leg, darling,” he told her in a low voice.  
“Of course, baby.” She held onto the hem of his shirt and pulled down to cover him up, and then he let go of her so as to return to his seat, back up against the wall. Dave and Trent slipped through the doorway to Lars' right; Layne entered the room right behind the two of them, cloaked in black leather and matching jeans once again, except this time he wore a soft gray Stetson hat over his wavy blond hair.  
“What'd we miss?” asked Trent, running his fingers through his damp black hair.  
“Smell the Magic is about to smell the magic!” Jerry declared, taking a sip from his beer and returning to the chair.  
“Yeah, we part of the final five so now we have to make a show stopper with the donuts and the macarons,” Sandra said in a single breath as she dialed the oven back on.  
“Okay, so how long will this part take?” Dave wondered aloud, taking his seat next to Lars again.  
“Two hours at the most,” said Marcia, retying her apron over her body.  
“Yeah, so grab a book or Lars' belly, and give us the time,” Mia encouraged. Layne chuckled at the sound of that, but the men all filtered out of the room and back outside to the morning gray and the falling drizzle. Chris, Layne, and Jerry headed back to the same bench as before while Trent dipped behind the corner on the right side of the building.  
Lars and Dave meanwhile lingered outside of the doorway to watch them without the drizzle falling too much upon their heads. Whenever Mia switched on the bright red mixer, the loud whirring noise from the small motor inside droned and wavered from the movements of her hand: it came to a point in which the sound almost resembled a guitar riff, to one of Kirk's riffs. Marcia sifted almond flour by tapping the opened palm of her hand upon the side of the metal sieve: the way in which she tapped it reminded Lars of his kick drums.  
“I almost want to make a drum line out of their synchronization,” he confessed. Dave turned his head to pay closer attention: he watched the flour float down from the bottom of Marcia's sieve, almost resembling the crash of one of Lars' symbols.  
“Yeah, I can hear it,” he added, shifting his weight as he crossed his right leg over the lower part of his left. “It's got like—kind of a groove to it.”  
“Stops and starts and grinds, like a mixer…” Lars brandished his arms before his body as if picturing his kit right there in front of him.  
“Throw it at James when you see him again,” Dave advised, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He returned to the doorway next to them and kept his eye on the three women working within a few feet from them. Soon, the aroma of donuts and cookies baking floated out of the room and over their heads. Sandra disappeared behind the oven for something; the baker from the station at the far end lugged several clear plastic garbage bags filled with what looked like slivers of cake and muffin stumps to the other side of the room across from Mia and Marcia.  
“I wonder what it's going to look like,” Dave confessed; Lars shook his head and shrugged.  
“No idea. Perhaps something red toned given the donuts and the cookies…” His voice trailed off as he turned his head to the left at Chris, Jerry, and Layne sitting over by the same bench as before: the three of them were passing around something small and tubular. Small wispy puffs of smoke floated up from underneath the awning. He thought of returning over there for a hit of the bong but decided not to, given he almost passed out from hunger accentuated by smoking from a joint. He lifted his wrist to try and change the time on his watch, but he could find no other way of doing such a thing. Perhaps if he had the right tools and had a flat surface before him, he could pick it apart and reset it in a manual fashion, but nowhere could he find such things. Instead of messing with it more, Lars took off his watch and stuffed it into his pocket. He made a mental note that the time was an hour ahead of what his watch decreed until Dave spoke again.  
“Looks like—flowers?”  
Lars turned his head again to witness Sandra and Marcia carrying a spindly metal stand about as tall as Dave himself, and accompanied with long, narrow wavy arms, narrow and tubular like a quartet of noodles. It was like a tree, albeit one with four branches.  
“You ladies need help?” Dave volunteered.  
“Please,” Sandra pleaded, jogging back behind the oven again, and he followed her; Lars was alone by the doorway. He figured Mia had it under control even though he had an itch inside of him to help her as well. She took the first two cookie sheets with fresh donuts and macaron cookies out from the oven, and maintained her rhythm with the Lizzie Borden rhyme under her breath by sticking another cookie sheet filled with raw donuts into the oven, and a fourth sheet with bright white macaron dough into the rack above that before closing the door. Marcia on the other hand, mixed up the same white chocolate and raspberry filling for the cookies and the bright red sweet and spicy glaze infused with tequila for the donuts.  
Dave and Sandra returned to the station with a pair of teardrop shaped platters in each hand. Lars took a closer look at the platters to find the tops consisted of polished silvery metal, while the bottoms were rounded and glossy and a bright color of some sort: Dave carried pearly white platters while Sandra beheld blood red ones, the same shade of red as the glaze on Mia's donuts. His eyes wandered to the cylinders on the ends of each of the branches, and the small notches upon the sides of the cylinders.  
“So, yeah, they just click on,” Sandra instructed him, and Dave stuck two of the platters between his legs before he slipped the tips of the first two onto the tallest branch, which stretched about half a foot over his head: the tips snapped on with a metallic clicking sound. Lars could see them taking shape from behind them.  
“Flowers,” he murmured to himself as Dave took the other two and snapped them on perpendicular to the first platters to form a four leaved lotus, “made entirely of… metal and porcelain. Heavy metal flowers.”  
He watched in awe as Dave doubled back to fetch some more platters to make another flower. He soon returned with peacock blue platters and repeated the process; Sandra followed suit with hot pink ones: Lars caught a glimmer of glitter in those ones. He watched Mia and Marcia scrambling to frost the cookies and glaze the donuts before setting them up on the platters making up the flowers: again, he considered helping them but he would only be in the way there.  
“Bakers! Ten minutes! Ten minutes to get your show stoppers ready and put up on display! Ten minutes!”  
“Ten minutes!” Lars echoed, his voice cracking; right then, the drizzle turned into full on rain. He ducked into the room and stood off to the side to stay dry. Dave wiped his hands together as he took one final look at the metal tree before him.  
“Are we good here?” he asked them.  
“I think we are, thank you Dave!” Sandra exclaimed, assisting Mia and Marcia in placing the donuts and the macarons on the petals of the flowers and on a lower shelf Lars had missed before.  
“Holy shit,” he noted as Dave huddled over to him and frowned.  
“Where are the other guys?”  
“Outside. I came in here because it's raining now. Mia told me Kurt was going to be here, too, but I haven't seen him.”  
“Dammit! Well—this thing here is pretty badass, though. It's also undoubtedly the best thing here, too, as far as I can tell from the other displays…”  
Lars stared down the line of tables at some of the other show stoppers: the one next door to Smell the Magic was a short stubby castle looking thing with a spiraled turret in the front; the one in the middle had a replica of the Eiffel tower; the one next to that had a palm tree, but he could hardly decipher the one at the very end. Once all the donuts and the macarons had made their way on the petals of the heavy metal flowers, Dave returned to the station to help them pick it up. Lars stood there, unsure of what to do next. The four of them lifted up the statue: Sandra and Dave took the flat base, lifting with their knees, while Mia and Marcia took the support pole in between the flowers.  
“You should get back,” he advised as he and Sandra crab walked towards the other side of the room.  
“Where? There's nothing more than these tables over here.”  
“You should get BACK! LARS! ULRICH!”  
Lars staggered backwards to the other side of the room, not paying attention to the tables behind him. He almost lost his balance on a fresh puddle before the door and fell right onto the pile of plastic bags filled with unused slivers of cake and muffin stumps off to the side. He fell onto the floor with a loud “OOF!”  
“Oh my God!” Mia exclaimed as they proceeded another foot to display the heavy metal flowers.  
“One minute, bakers! One minute! Get those show stoppers ready!”  
A slight pain shot up his back and over his hips from the impact, but at least the pile cushioned his fall and he had missed the hard floor, or one of the tables. He lay there for a moment before he rolled onto his side and then onto his stomach. He pushed himself up onto his knees right as they set the tree of heavy metal flowers down on the floor and Mia doubled back to check on him.  
“Are you okay?” she asked, her face riddle with concern. “Are you okay?”  
“Yeah—” He stood to his feet before her and let out a long low sigh. “Good thing those bags were there otherwise I really would be agony right now.”  
“Bags of garbage broke your fall,” Marcia noted as she padded over to them.  
“Thus was the moment I realize I was indeed Eurotrash,” he cracked, and the three of them burst out into laughter.  
“Time's up, bakers! Get ready for the judges.”  
Sandra and Dave joined the three of them right there next to the open doorway. Mia lifted her hand to touch Lars' chest, but he wrapped his fingers around either side of her hand.  
“Tens of thousands of dollars… or nothing,” Lars muttered aloud, his fingers squeezing the back of her hand. “This is nuts.”  
They all stood in silent anticipation for the judges to make their entrance.


	83. Chapter 83

Lars and Dave were asked to leave the room so as to not interfere with the judging; the former huddled underneath the cherry tree over by the front door, meanwhile, the latter pulled his hood over his head to protect his head from the falling rain overhead. A curtain of tension lingered over them: they were not even part of the competition and yet it all felt too much for them to bear as Dave ran his fingers through his hair and Lars let out a long low whistle; the dull pain in his back and his hips began to fade as he stood there for a moment. He unfastened the top button of his shirt so as to relax a bit more.  
“Okay, so Mia told me to wait right before this cherry tree over here,” Lars explained, even though droplets of cold rain water trickled through the leaves and onto the crown of his head. He stuffed his hands into his pockets so as to keep the warmth in his body, but it proved useless in keeping him dry.  
“Dude, it's raining in droves and you're getting wet,” Dave pointed out. “Let's go over by that bench again. I'm not letting you get all wet out here—no way, no how.”  
“But I promised Mia—”  
“Come on, come on—she will understand. Trust me.”  
Dave opened his coat and put the left side around Lars' body so as to guide him over to Chris, Layne, and Jerry on the bench; his blanket of long red hair and the depth of his chest protected Lars from the incoming rain. One looking on and not knowing better would think this was an older brother guiding his little brother to safety; once Lars smelled the wispy smoke floating off of the bong, he knew that if he smoked from it for himself, he wouldn't come close to passing out again.  
Chris moved over for Lars to take a seat at the end of the bench, and he began shivering right at that moment. He brushed the rain water off of the crown of his head while Dave stood before him with part of his hair dripping wet and the shoulders of his coat soaked. Lars then had a hankering for a drink of some kind.  
“Would you guys like a hit from our bong?” Jerry offered, his voice breaking from the smoke inhalation.  
“Please,” Dave accepted the glass vessel and crouched down before Chris' knees for a light. He closed his eyes as the bright yellow flame ignited the tiny green and yellow sprigs of marijuana jutting out from the opened end; Lars watched him take in a deep breath of smoke and then lower the bong from his mouth. He turned his head to breathe out the cloud of smoke away from the four of them. Dave coughed twice before turning back to them.  
“Holy—ahem! Holy fucking shit, what's in this? Grains of wheat and chicken bones?”  
“Local grown sativa,” Layne explained. “Well, I wouldn't say local grown—part of it's from Kirkland, where I live in Seattle, and the other part is from Bainbridge Island courtesy of Ben Shepherd and his older brother Henry. But it's got a little spinach and mescaline mixed in to give it a touch more oomph, I'd say.”  
“Spinach! That's what I kept tasting,” said Chris as Dave handed the bong over to Lars: he took the bong and held it up to his mouth. Chris held the lighter to the end and lit up the plants inside for him to inhale. The heat scorched his tongue and his throat but he took in a large breath before finally gagging and engaging in a fit of coughing.  
The waves of red hair upon Dave's head resembled actual flames while his skin turned as white as porcelain. The gray in the sky overhead morphed and turned bright pink while the rain took on the shape of fresh ripe strawberries straight from a market in the very heart of Copenhagen. He could hear Jerry laughing about a mile away from underneath the bench, while Layne's voice reverberated through an echo chamber to Lars' left. He couldn't understand what anyone was saying outside of the words upon the railing over his head. He tried to focus on the words but the strawberries falling all around him kept distracting him.  
He felt someone take the bong out from his hand so he knew he was still on the ground.  
Some kind of mushroom cluster bloomed out from Dave's left shoulder in a bouquet of bright yellow, blue, and purple, and then when Lars lifted his arms to look at his hands better, his fingers took the shape of the claws of a creature: the skin had hardened and fallen away to reveal hard bone and razor sharp claws. Some kind of monster had come out of him and now he witnessed it before his very eyes.  
He raised the bong to his mouth again but then he realized he was bringing the side of his hand to his mouth instead. He could feel his waist thickening even more just by the memory of the burning of the marijuana and cactus grains on the inside of the bong.  
Lars licked his lips at the sight of a particularly juicy looking strawberry which had fallen before his feet there on the blue, green, and orange swirls making up the pavement.  
Dave said something. He paid no attention other than to the strawberry, its bright red flesh ripe and plump, like his own skin. But then on the other hand, he would be eating himself if he ate up that strawberry so he stayed there in place.  
Then Dave said something again, followed by a statement from Jerry again: his words flowed out like a river of torrential water on the highest mountain side in the Italian Alps. Dave said something again and the words emanated from his mouth all silly like he was speaking backwards. Lars hiccuped and coughed again, and his body trembled and shook from the sensation. He thought of kissing someone. He thought of kissing several people, all at the same time. And then he thought of kissing that strawberry! Kiss and make love to that strawberry on the next ferry to Bainbridge Island!  
And then he thought of kissing himself. That would do. He had seen God inside of his own flesh, and he had also witnessed God in the form of a ripe strawberry beckoning him to place it atop a short sponge cake with whipped cream and eat it right the fuck up right there like the little gremlin he wanted to be for Mia.  
Mia! Mia Panadera! With all her curves and her luscious locks of dark hair! Her Midas touch when it came to baking! Perhaps she could come forth to touch that strawberry and turn it to solid gold for him.  
Speaking of hair, the strands of wavy hair on the sides of his head slithered forth like the snakes on a Gorgon's head. Gorgon. Gorgonzola. He was both God and Medusa? He was both God and Medusa!  
The slithering serpents emerged right into his face: their heads let out loud feral hisses which resembled the spraying mist on a waterfall. Two of them on the right lunged forward to kiss his face before fizzling out to a fine cloud of mist. A fine cloud of mist that smelled like a brand new car right before his now.  
The others gave him kisses before fizzling out again, but this time the cloud floated down towards his stomach, as round as Jupiter's equator. He felt as big and mighty as the solar system, looming through the deep voluminous darkness of space and time.  
Father Time himself bowed before Lars as he stood on Saturn's rings and beckoned for a dance. The darkness of space and time turned Lars' snakes and claws into soft clay aged by the discouragement of Father Time.  
The sun burst through the clouds over his head, the sun coming to take the planets back from him with its gaping black hole in the middle of filmy red and orange flames. The sun itself had nothing on him, that is until the clay making up his body hardened and split apart to reveal nothing, nothing but a ghost.  
Give it back… give it back… where's the flesh?  
“I'm humble,” he muttered inside of his skull, which came back intact with the flowers on the cold ground. He had returned to flesh form but not quite. That is, until he heard her voice again, clear across the earth from him. Everything came so clear to him, so clear and bright that he swore the sun would revert him back to clay again.  
He rushed towards her with the haze continuing to surround his head and his stomach. Mia's hair never appeared more black, and her body never seemed softer and more feminine to him.  
“How'd it go? How'd it go? How'd it go?” The words just echoed throughout his mind and they came out in multiples.  
She blinked several times at the sight of him before showing him a grin.  
“You smell like weed,” she remarked, her voice coming into his ear sideways. “So I am going to assume that you are hungry.”  
“Y-Y-Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. T-T-T-Touch me. Touch me. Touch me. Touch me.”  
“I am touching you—”  
He felt her running her fingers through the haze around his head and down the sides of his neck. Her lips smoothed against his skin and left a smoldering kiss which tickled his hips and the lower side of his belly. Her hair floated behind her head like a curtain of black silk against the pink sky and the falling berries around them: each time the berries made impact with the ground they made a silent splash which in turn smelled of fresh pressed clean paper.  
“I see heaven in your eyes right now,” he told her, almost in an absent state of mind: his own voice had been lost in the black and the pink all around them.  
“Do you now?”  
“I just smoked a cactus. I am now a cactus.”  
She giggled, her laughter coming in from a thousand miles away.  
“You're funny! Come on, let's get some food in this tummy of yours.”  
She took his hand and guided him away from the splashes of pink and orange, past a long row of black and red pegasuses, and to the car which awaited them underneath an upside down joshua tree. Mia eased him into the front seat when he felt the entirety of his crotch swell up: his jeans felt as though he had stuffed a pair of tennis balls down before his actual balls.  
Everything seemed to go by in a blur, a whirl wind, and a flash. Colors everywhere and blended together to make a bright gray glow around his eyes. Strawberries morphed into the actual seeds and stray stems. No sound to be heard except for the pounding of his own heart and the feel of his feet on something hard upon the soft ground.  
He felt something touch his tongue next. Something sweet and savory. Something so sweet and savory that he wanted more of it. He swallowed it all down until there was nothing left. The colors dissipated and faded into blackness, deep cavernous blackness, so deep that he stood perfectly still in hopes he could make it all go away.  
“Lars?” Her voice sounded as though it was five miles down a metal tube. He blinked several times before a faint outline of something formed out of the darkness. The line took shape of her dining room table. He blinked some more in order for the shadows to fade some more and reveal the outline of her head.  
“Lars?” she repeated, her voice coming closer to him. He shook his head and the light returned to a normal low level, like how a regular room in a house needed to be set for the two of them.  
“Lars, are you with me?” Mia's voice returned to the normal low level he knew and loved; he turned to see her sitting next to him at the kitchen table with a white plate before her.  
“I—I think so?”  
She pressed a hand to his forehead to check his temperature. The smell of plantains and spices hung around him: he had missed the end of the judging.  
“How are you? Are you feeling better?”  
He glanced down at the empty plate on the table before him: pieces of mashed plantain lay upon the concave of the plate.  
“Somewhat. Getting all of this food into myself definitely helped. That was weird.”  
“It took me a moment to realize what had happened to you. You were white as a ghost and your eyes were all big and you had this huge grin on your face like the Joker. It was kind of funny, actually, watching you trying to eat the plate. Chris told me it was supposed to wear off after a few hours.”  
“Well, it was—it was quite the experience, smoking weed with a little extra mind fuckery thrown in. I felt like I was doing yoga in a world full of candy. All I can say now is I am really thirsty.”  
“I would imagine—you ate everything in the pot of mofongo.”  
He gaped at her in shock.  
“I ate all of your mofongo?!”  
“You kept insisting on more and more, and so I gave you four massive helpings. It's okay, though—I made plenty of it.”  
He then remembered his motives behind taking his hit from the bong.  
“Mia, darling—I just wanted to smoke some weed to help me relax because—you know—”  
“No, no, no, I get it. I get it. But like I said, it was pretty funny to watch you. You got all goofy and funny, like you were cracking jokes and laughing to yourself. I'd say something and you would laugh like a madman. I led you into the house and you called it a jam of jelly—it was funny! You make me laugh when you're sober and you make me laugh when you've a little too much aforementioned mind fuckery.”  
He sighed as he slouched back in his seat. The pressure in his stomach then came into fruition and he felt very full all at once. He ran a hand through his hair before speaking again: he dropped his hand to make sure his fingers were still intact and not the same creature's claws as before. The skin on his fingers and the back of his hands was smooth, and the claws had retreated back into the form of fingernails.  
“Well—how'd the competition go at least?”  
“That leads me to my next point…”  
A grin crept across her face, and he knew what she intended right at that moment.  
“You did!” he declared. She nodded before she leaned over the side of the table to kiss him on the side of the neck.  
“All because of you and your insatiable appetite,” she whispered, her eyes gleaming. He shook his head and his heart hammered inside of his chest.  
“God… I just wanna fock right now,” he confessed.  
“Right now?” she echoed. “Lars, you just came off of a psychedelic trip.”  
“A psychedelic trip that helped set me free and now I'm back in the flesh. Free love, Mia darling. Free love.”  
He clasped his hands onto the sides of her face: he felt the buttons of his shirt press against his body as he lunged for her.  
“I just wanna fock right now,” he repeated, stradling her lap. His head spun a bit from his thundering heart beat and from the residue of the mescaline running through his system but he wanted it.  
“Oh—  
He put his arms around her shoulders and kissed her on the lips.  
“Go slowly, though,” he insisted, running his fingers through her dark hair. “Behage.”  
“Okay—” She closed her eyes when they locked lips once again.  
“Remember, skat—you are my baker,” he whispered; her fingers crept under his shirt to hold onto his love handles.  
“And you are the maestro,” she recalled in a husky voice.


	84. Chapter 84

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "So the world is spinning faster.  
> Are you dizzy when you stall?  
> Let the music be your master.  
> Will you heed the master's call?"
> 
> -"Houses of the Holy", Led Zeppelin

Mia led Lars into the master bedroom of the house right as his jeans were coming undone down his legs: he nearly tripped on the hems of his jeans but she kept him going all the way to the bed. He slipped his jeans all the way off before diving headfirst onto the bed, even though his body felt exhausted from his continuing to come down from the psychedelic high: the full feeling inside of his stomach did nothing to help matters, either. He lay face down on top of the mattress for a moment to gather his bearings and then Mia spoke again.  
“Here, put this on—"  
He lifted his head to look back at her holding the black suit out from the closet. He blinked several times before he figured out it was thin black leather: a silvery chain consisting the belt hung around the waist and silver zippers and buckles decorated the sleeves.  
“Ah, so you wanna get kinda kinky with the fuckly things?”  
“Indeed I do. Put it on.”  
Lars lifted himself into an upright position and peeled off his shirt; he clambered off of the bed to take off his underwear, and hence he stood there before her, completely naked. He heard her unzip the bondage suit at the back and then she held it out for him to take: he stuck his right foot in, followed by his left. The leather pressed snug against his skin; he tugged it up onto his thighs and his hips, and then he stretched it over his belly and his sides, followed by his chest. It almost felt like wearing latex as he stuck his arms into the sleeves, and slipped his fingers into the fingers of the gloves; he pulled the leather up over his shoulders and his collar: the collar hugged his neck and even with it undone, he could feel his face growing fuller at the feel of it underneath his jaw.  
“Here, let me zip you up—” she offered once she had put on her lacy teddy. He turned around with his arms held out from his body and she held onto the zipper pull at the base of his lower back with one hand, and pushed his hair out of the way with the other. The smell of the leather underneath his chin filled his nose as she tugged the pull up his spine and towards the base of his neck. It tightened over his torso once it had zipped all the way up: his belly felt like a sack of butcher meat underneath the taut leather. But he managed to shuffle around to face her head on once more.  
“How do I look?” he asked her, fondling his hips with his gloved hands.  
“Too hot for words. The fact it's black makes it even sexier."  
He grunted inside of his throat at the feel of the leather gathering all around his crotch and resultantly stretching tighter and tighter over his pelvic bones.  
“It's a little bit snug,” he admitted.  
“It's supposed to be. You know--to accentuate the sinews and the plumpness of your body and everything and whatnot.”  
“Did they say about—the leather bunching up—around my nuts?” He pinched onto a fold of leather and tugged downward.  
“No—but I am glad you took off your chonies, though.”  
“So—why was I asked to be hell bent for leather?”  
She raised both of her index fingers.  
“Wait right here.”  
She darted out of the room and back into the hallway. Lars thought of taking a seat on the edge of the bed but he considered about the leather bunching up some more around his hips and on the insides of his thighs, or crumpling around the backs of his knees. He shuffled his bare feet about the cool carpet and he wondered if this little suit came with boots, given the attached gloves at the ends of the sleeves. He glanced down at his waist, at the slight, round bump of flesh gently poking out from the middle of his body. He could only imagine what she had in store for him that evening as she padded into the room with a plate holding a rather large slice of devil's food cake with chocolate frosting.  
“Eat this—” She shoved a bite of cake resting on the tines of a fork right into his mouth, catching him off guard. He almost lost his balance and fell onto the bed on his side.  
“What—” He wiped off some frosting on the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “—what—who—mmm! Mia!”  
He swallowed the bite on accident.  
“What in the hell are you doing? I'm not even hungry!”  
She loomed close to his face and licked her lips.  
“I want you rounder—and fuller—it will please me. And I know for a fact that it will satisfy you.”  
She sank the tines of the fork into the pointed corner of the slice and lifted up another large bite; he shook his head but she set down the fork on the edge of the plate to push him back onto the bed. He landed on his back with a soft thump from the top of the mattress. He tried to get back up but she had already set her knee on the bed next to his hip; then she was right above him. The fork never slid off of the plate as she leaned closer to his face; she picked up the fork again and held the cake before his mouth. He tried to resist but the smell of the chocolate frosting tickled him like a decadent seductress. His stomach was full of mashed plantains and beans, but he was tempted by the aroma of the chocolate and the light, fluffy appearance of the cake itself.  
Lars opened his mouth to let her slip it onto his tongue. Such bliss!  
“Eat,” she commanded in a soft voice, “eat—you're skin and bones.”  
“And a little bit of fat,” he added upon swallowing the bite of cake.  
“No—”  
She gave him another bite, followed by a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. He paid no attention to his stomach or the tightness of the leather about his body, but rather fixed on the flavor of the devil's food and the silkiness of the chocolate on top and on the inside.  
So what, he thought. So fucking what. I'd rather eat this than be deprived in Danish school once again.  
At one point, he was unsure if his laying his head flat upon the bed or from the residual high inside of his brain but he started to feel dizzy once again.  
“I need—I need to be—chained,” he sputtered out once he swallowed a rather large piece of frosting.  
“Hence all of the chains upon your sleeves.” Mia sloughed off another piece of frosting and dangled the fork over his mouth as if torturing him. “Once of these days, I will find a way for us to engage in a proper round on a bakery floor, but until then, we shall engage in cake and leather on the bed.”  
She slipped the frosting right into his mouth and that time he closed his eyes to take in the sugar and the butter, both of which were headed right to his thighs and his waist. He swallowed when he heard her set down the plate on the bed spread next to his hip; he felt her lean into his face to give him a kiss right on the lips.  
“I feel you,” she whispered, caressing the tips of her fingers down his chest, and they made a soft squeak upon the leather.  
“Of course, darling—” he said in an almost absent minded manner.  
“You're getting hotter and hotter—I can feel it.” Her fingers touched the side of his belly and his toes curled upon the carpet.  
“So are you.”  
“Your hair—so luxurious. And your body—so lush and full underneath the leather—dominate me.”  
“Dominate you?”  
“Yes. You are the maestro after all, papacito rico.”  
He opened his eyes to gaze on at her for a second before she climbed off of him. He rolled his head over the top of the bed as she lay down on the foot of the bed with her feet and her legs pointed at him.  
“Have at it, baby—have your cake and eat it, too, baby—”  
Lars wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before rolling onto his side. She had already taken off her panties: he looked straight on into those lacy bright pink lips and that slender dark slit in between. He ran the tip of his tongue along the edges of his teeth as he lunged forward to feel her up before he moved down to her clit to give her a little fingering.  
“Let my beautiful music be your maestro, skat,” he said to her face in a husky voice. His fingers ran down the dimples in her chest and then around the curvature of her breasts, over the points of her nipples, and over the soft curve making up her belly; he leaned his head into her body and lifted the lace lining the bottom hem of the teddy. He pressed his lips to the flesh over her belly button for a light kiss.  
He moved his mouth to the left of the rim for another kiss; he moved to the opposite side and that time she groaned inside of her throat. He kissed underneath her belly button and followed the curvature down to her bare crotch. Her feet shuffled about on top of the mattress once he lifted his head up from beneath her waist.  
He rubbed the tips of his index fingers and his thumbs against each other before running them over those lips, now almost blood red from arousal. Her knees buckled and waved about as he caressed her clit; he was careful not to go any further inside of her just yet given the leather upon his skin. Her head rolled about on the bed before him but he fondled and stroked her, remaining gentle enough to tickle her.  
Soon, he slipped the tips of his fingers into the slit and gave the skin a series of light caresses. The leather bound fingers on his right hand slithered inside and, rolling his hand over so the back faced the top of the bed, felt around for that little particularly sensitive bundle, that little spot as big as the tip of his pinky finger.  
He knew he found it when she yelped out.  
“Touch it!” she commanded. He moved his finger about as if he was beckoning for her to come closer.  
“Oh—AH!”  
He snapped his eyes shut and stuck his tongue straight out with each gyration of his finger. His free hand grasped onto her knee to hold her steady.  
“Yeah, you like that?” he grunted out, pressing the knuckle of his middle finger against the outside skin to steady his hold on her.  
“Please—please please please PLEASE!”  
He knew she was about to reach the climax and thence he took out his finger; he shot between her knees to loom over her body and kiss her on the lips, a deep soulful kiss full of tongue: he kept the hand he had inside of her clit away from her body. He let go of her lips so as to gaze into her eyes.  
“Let me draw you,” he whispered, “behage.”  
“Of course—baby,” she breathed out, her lips parted and her chest heaving. Using his left hand, he climbed off of her and off of the bed; he then moved his hair around and over his shoulder to unzip the bondage suit for himself. It was difficult given his sole free hand, but he managed to bring the zipper pull almost halfway down his back: it was enough for him to slip his arms out from the sleeves. Once he had freed both of his arms, he padded into the bathroom to take it off the rest of the way, and so he could return to her wearing nothing.  
As he peeled the leather off from his chest and his belly, he caught a glimpse of the plunger tucked in the corner of the bathroom. He flashed back on the time he had seen it, and the smear of red on one side of it: the red had disappeared from the outside of the rubber. He raised an eyebrow at that, but not for long given the leather peeled off of his belly. He let out a groan of relief, even though he knew he would have to wear it more in order to get acquainted with it. He shoved the leather down his hips and his legs until he could lift his feet out from the bottoms of the legs.  
Lars stared at himself in the mirror before him, at his face in particular, and frowned. But then he looked at his belly and gave it a loving pat with both of his hands. He stepped out of the bathroom and ran his fingers through the underside of his hair upon the base of his skull. He then remembered what Mia had told all of them at the competition earlier.  
“So tell me more about this song you are writing,” he said as he returned to the room, placing the side of his forearm against the side of the door frame and crossing his right ankle over his left. “I am curious now.”  
She rolled her head over with her lips still parted and twitching a little bit.  
“You really want to know about that?”  
“Yes, please. Please! Darling, I'm a musician. I have made three albums. Whatever aces you have up your sleeve must never be hidden, and from me especially.” He flashed her a wink and she ran her tongue about her bottom lip before she stretched out her legs and rolled onto her side. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for a pad of paper next to the handheld phone on the nightstand next to the bed.  
“I wrote it down…” she told him, tossing her hair back from her face. He nibbled on his bottom lip before dropping his arm from the door frame and swaggering towards her.  
“I was listening to 'Cracked Actor' by David Bowie and 'Ballad of a Thin Man' by Bob Dylan when I wrote it,” she explained, still keeping her voice rather husky. “It just—came out of me so to speak.”  
“Excellent! Can't go wrong with the Starman and the last standing great American poet.”  
Written in neat penmanship in black ink, he read the song lyrics, arranged in stanzas, like a proper poem:

"You've got to hide me away, and I've got to find the hiding place.  
Please don't let me be seen, and don't let me be heard.  
We've got something more here, and it needs a place, somewhere far away.

You and I, we can do it together; we're survivors.  
You felt the cold earth, and I felt the cold metal.  
Don't worry, please: we can pull through it together.  
Somewhere in there is the rope, and so tie me down.  
Somewhere in there is my heart, and so eat me alive.

You and I, we can do it together; we're survivors.  
You felt the cold earth, and I felt the cold metal.  
Don't worry, please: we can pull through it together.  
You wandered upon the cold earth, and I caressed the cold metal.  
Don't worry, please: we can pull through it together.

The world is out there waiting; darling, all my kisses can hide,  
and my lonely heart can wait.  
Somewhere in there is the rope, and so tie me down.  
Somewhere in there is my heart, and so eat me alive.”

“Wow,” he muttered aloud as he lifted his gaze. “I like this. I like this a lot. Just out of curiosity, is this about you and me?”  
“Yes.” She eyed his belly and his hip bones, and stuck out the tip of her tongue at the luscious sight before her. “I wrote this while you were on tour and I have to confess—I was worrying about our relationship a bit.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. You know because—we were—apart for a long time.”  
He pressed his free hand to his hip to accentuate his body even more for her.  
“Well, I am here now,” he assured her in a soft voice. “And my wish is that you come with us if and when you can—”  
He lifted his hand to push the bangs out his eyes.  
“Oh, for crying out loud. I really need a trim on my bangs.”  
“That's right!” she declared in a hushed voice. The phone rang right then, and she reached for the handheld phone.  
“Hello? Oh, hi, Ashley!”  
Lars reread the song's lyrics again and closed his eyes so as to picture the music behind them, but then the tone in Mia's voice caught his attention.  
“What?”  
He perked up to pay closer attention.  
“You're kidding! What—”  
He raised his eyebrows at the concerned expression upon her face.  
“Oh, my God. I'm so sorry. Okay. Yeah, Lars and I will be right over. Okay—talk to you soon."  
She hung up the phone right there and gazed up at him.  
“What happened?” he asked, clearing his throat.  
“You're not going to believe this.”  
He bowed his head and parted his lips a bit.  
“James and Ashley broke up.”  
He almost dropped the pad of paper onto the floor but he caught himself as he gaped at her.  
“NO!” His voice echoed over the walls of the room.  
“Yes. Let's get dressed—she will tell us more about it.”


	85. Chapter 85

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part's dedicated to my dear friend, the one and only Chris Cornell. I miss you every day 

“Okay, start from the top. What on Earth happened?”  
Lars and Mia had arrived to the back door of the Bennetts' house within the hour without bothering to tidy up their hair: he arrived wearing nothing but a disheveled button down shirt and his jeans hanging off of his hips, while she came in a coat and a pair of jeans and nothing else. The two of them had taken a seat upon the couch across from Ashley and Marcia, the former of whom wiped away her tears with a cloth napkin. Sonia, meanwhile, was in the other room tending to a fresh pot of coffee.  
Marcia stroked Ashley's knee as she sniffled and brushed away tears from her eyes. She gasped for air once she lay the napkin in her lap.  
“I—I—I almost don't want to—to talk about it,” she confessed, sniffling hard, “but you guys already came over. And Lars—”  
He raised his eyebrows at her.  
“—I want you to know that—that—that if you're going to blame someone, blame me. It was my fault. My fault. My fault, my fault, my fault—oh God!”  
She buried her face in the napkin and sobbed. Marcia lifted her hand from her knee to embrace her right there on the couch. Ashley closed her eyes as a lock of blue hair fell over the side of her tear stained face. Lars sighed through his nose and then he gripped onto Mia's hand resting upon his knee. Her skin felt warm to the touch, a warmth he wanted to behold against him forever, even if they merely remained boyfriend and girlfriend. Ashley pulled back to give her eyes another wipe and another dab before speaking again.  
“James and I,” she began, “were so intense there for a while, especially around Christmas time. I mean, we were so close and our relationship was getting hot and torrid. I just… I fucked it up so bad. I'm such an idiot.”  
“Go slowly, though,” Mia coaxed her as she peered down at Lars' hand, and then his belly, and then his face. Ashley sniffled again and then blew her nose on the napkin.  
“Okay. Well, about three weeks ago—the start of the tour—I get a call from my writing teacher who tells me that our final is to do an interview with a local musician and write it out and submit it on the day of the final. I thought of James but you guys were away on tour, and you all live six hundred miles from here, so I wouldn't call you local. I call Mom and she tells me she's interviewing Kurt—you know, Kurt from Nirvana. And so I told her about the final and she invited me up—it was a Saturday, so I could ride up alone. I meet up with him at the house, at Mom's house, and he's taking a nap on the couch. I hang around for a little bit and then he wakes up, and he tells me he and Tracy—his girlfriend Tracy—had split up and so he was feeling alone. I told him my boyfriend was out of town and so we could hang out for a while.”  
She closed her eyes and the three of them watched her lips tremble and a tear stream down from the corner of her right eye.  
“And?” Lars squeaked out, but the sound of his voice made his own skin creep and crawl right at that moment. Ashley opened her eyes and two more tears followed down the side of her face towards her jaw. She picked up the napkin to give her eyes another dab.  
“I was feeling alone, too. I mean, James and I had gotten so close and so entwined with each other, but I lacked that touch and that comfort. Again, Lars, if you're—” Her voice broke and he felt the butterflies rising up in his stomach at the very sight of her, but not in the way in which he felt them whenever he observed Mia making him a dish of some sort. “—if you're going to blame someone, blame me. This was my fault. I started kissing Kurt and then the next thing I know, we're making out on the floor of the kitchen. My mom's kitchen no less!”  
Lars slumped his shoulders as he watched her weep into the napkin some more. The best friend of his girlfriend cheated on his best friend, and when they were away from them for such a brief time. His heart pounded inside of his chest, but not from anger. His hands and wrists began to shake, and he wanted to clutch at himself but he worried about either of these three girls wondering about his reason.  
“So you—you cheated on James with Kurt,” said Mia in a soft tone of voice; she cleared her throat but she never said anything else.  
“Yes. Yes! It was all me. Kurt just so happened to be there and I couldn't control my fucking vagina. We went into that back room of the house and slept together that night. That's the first part of what happened. The second part—I almost didn't want to tell James about it when they returned the other night.”  
“But—you did?” asked Sonia, once she returned to the room with two large black mugs of coffee for her sister and Ashley.  
“No. When I woke up, Kurt was gone and he left his fuzzy sweater with me, and so I took it back with me when I came back here. I washed it and hung it up in the closet. The night before last, James came up here to see me and also because Lars was here, and the baking show was going down, and he—he—he found it. He asked me whose was it and then—all hell broke loose, so to speak. We broke up right there in my house. Right there, in my fucking house.”  
Ashley picked up the napkin from her lap again to wipe her eyes some more. Lars squeezed Mia's hand, continuing to feel that warm skin and those fine bones on the inside, that is until she grunted inside of her throat.  
“Oh—forgive me, darling,” he whispered.  
“It's okay,” she assured him, reaching across her lap to touch his thigh with the tips of her fingers. Sonia returned to the living room with two more cups of coffee for the two of them; Lars took his by the handle and the base, and took a deep inhale of that warm aroma with just a mere kiss of cream mixed inside of it. He took a sip and then he peered across the room to Ashley gazing on at him with intent from over the rim of her coffee mug.  
“Lars, is it just me or are you getting bigger?” she asked him.  
“I am getting bigger, yes,” he replied.  
“He just ate a ton of mofongo and some cake, too,” Mia pointed out as she placed her cup down in her lap. She reached over with her right hand to give his belly a soft pat. “But yes, he is getting so nice and soft and round.”  
“Gonna tell you the same thing Mom told you, and take care of him, Mia,” said Ashley with another sniffle before she tilted the mug towards her face for a sip. “How's Kirk doing? Where's he at?”  
“Down south,” answered Sonia, taking a seat on the carpet before the hearth. “He should be coming up this weekend thereabouts.”  
“And how's it between the three of you? Is it still pretty hot between the three of you?”  
“Oh, is it ever,” replied Marcia, her eyes gleaming, but then she stopped herself. “I don't really wanna talk about it, though. You know.”  
Lars shifted his weight in his seat. He wanted to tell Mia he was uncomfortable with all of this happening here right before him, but she seemed more intent on speaking to her best friends than being with him. Quite the contrast given they had just been laying on her bed in nothing more than leather and lace, and they were giving themselves to one another. He nibbled on his bottom lip before taking another sip of coffee, and then he climbed to his feet to head into the downstairs hallway, albeit without excusing himself.  
Once they fell out of earshot, he stood there with his back against the wall and the cup of coffee up against his thigh. Lars thought back to Valentine's Day, when he woke up with the warm and soft feeling inside of him. How he wanted to touch himself and take another series of photographs of himself, but the camera was back home and he had no idea about taking his shirt off when the three of them had fallen out of the mood. How he wanted his journal with him to write everything down! But he had no means of speaking to himself and thus, he pressed his back against the wall and slid down to the carpet while keeping the tips of his fingers upon the rim of the mug.  
He stretched out his legs once he had taken a seat on the floor. He could feel the flesh on his middle tightening and spilling out over the top of his jeans like a thick roll of jelly. But he glanced down to see a small band of fat down around his waist and his whole belly poking out like the risen rounded top of a loaf of bread. Beautiful flesh upon his body. He did it all for her and she was showing it herself, and yet he wondered about the two of them. She touched his tummy and his heart, and then wrote a song about the two of them. He knew it had to be sincere: it just had to be.  
Lars closed his eyes and pressed the back of his head against the wall. Her being there with him helped him open his eyes to himself and the inside of his stomach. He had always had that desire inside of him: someone needed to coax it out for him to feel it, to feel the love, to feel his own power rolling inside of him. And yet, he couldn't help but feel that could have been the two of them. Mia perhaps could have taken Ashley's place and cheated on Lars with Kurt, or someone else.  
Something nagged at him that it was too touch to bear, and perhaps that explained why the kids in Danish school picked on him and mocked him for so long. They didn't understand the beauty that resided within him not because he was ugly and girlish, but because they felt jealous of him and they were in awe of them. That was it!  
He lifted a hand to rest on his belly to feel the warmth from inside of him. That warmth that Mia loved so much and wanted so much more of upon every bite of every dish she beheld before him. And then he realized his psychedelic high wasn't in vain after all.  
“Lars?”  
He opened his eyes and lifted his head to take a look at Mia walking down the hallway towards him with her mug of coffee in hand.  
“Lars? Are you okay?”  
“Yeah. Yeah, I just—needed get out of there for a moment,” he confessed. She stooped down to place her mug on the carpet next to him, and then she climbed down onto her knees and then onto the seat of her jeans next to him.  
“Pretty high emotions in there, I'll admit,” she remarked, picking up her mug again for another sip.  
“Well, and—can I—confess something to you?”  
“Of course, baby.”  
Lars sighed through his nose, keeping his hand placed upon his belly, the belly he had earned in the past six months. Even through the fabric of his shirt, he could feel the butterflies continuing to swirl through the inside of his stomach. He shuffled his feet a bit, and kept his eye on his legs, still stretched out before him.  
“Mia, I—” He closed his eyes and pursed his lips together.  
“I—I feel like that could've been the two of us back there.”  
“You mean… concerning James and Ashley?”  
“Yes. That is my fear, darling.”  
Mia hung there silent and Lars fetched up a heavy sigh through his nose once again. He wished he had never mentioned it but she needed to know if they were to go any further in their relationship and their time together. The butterflies in his stomach agonized him so much that he thought he was going to pass out again, that is when she spoke up again.  
“I'll hit up Sandra and Danielle and see if I can get some time off to come with you,” she said in a single breath.  
He opened his eyes and gasped at her.  
“Will you?” He turned his head to look on at her with an excited expression on his face.  
“Yes. Yes, my love.”  
She reached up to both sides of his face and kissed him on the lips with her eyes closed. He placed his hands on her sides but they were in a rather awkward position to any sort of love making right there in the hallway.  
“My hope is that doesn't happen to us, darling,” he admitted.  
“Same here. Come here—”  
He felt her let go of him for a moment to pick up her coffee mug. When he opened his eyes, she put her arms around his waist and showed him a smile.  
“Thicker and thicker,” she remarked, “fuller and fuller, and the more pleased I feel about it.”  
“I am trying, my darling.”  
“Remember when we first made out?”  
“Oh yes. How could I forget? It was right here on the floor. I think right here in this very spot.”  
She inched closer to him to hold him while she kissed him. He felt her fingers caress through his hair from his scalp outward, and then she moved her hand back to his hips to give him a gentle squeeze.  
“Please don't leave,” he begged her in a whisper.  
“Never,” she breathed into his face.


	86. Chapter 86

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "How could she say to me,  
> 'Love will find a way?'  
> Gather round all you clowns.  
> Let me hear you say,  
> 'Hey, you've got to hide your love away.'"  
> -"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", The Beatles

Lars downed the rest of his coffee before he lay down on his back on the carpet for her. He ran his fingers down his shirt and, once he reached the hem, he lifted up the fabric to show her his soft skin, and then he unfastened the bottom two buttons. Mia set the mug on the other side of the hallway before she faced him on with the tips of her fingers on the button and the fly of his jeans. She exposed some more of his skin and he relaxed the muscles in his hips and his thighs.  
“That's it, skat—right there—right there—right on my happy trail—do what you want with me—”  
The silky feel of her lips and the touch of her fingers sent shivers up his spine and back down again into his hips. He rolled his head to the side as she ran the tips of her first two fingers along his hip bone. Such a spot, to have her fingers running upon the groove of the bone there. The feeling tickled him so much that his knees buckled and he shuffled his heels about the floor: she placed her lips right on the bone and then on the curvature of his lower belly. He tilted his head back to emphasize his throat, and he thought about what to write in his journal upon his next chance. He had nothing at first, that is until she gave a light little love nibble on the skin right next to his belly button. That forced his toes into a tight curl inside of his tennis shoes.  
He stuck out his tongue upon the feel of her teeth on the same spot right on his flesh. That little pinch followed by a soft kiss and a soft suck of her lips. Every gentle pinch on his skin made him shift his weight right around his hips. It felt as though he was under a restraint of some kind, bound to the floor with a chain and a collar around his neck. No escape, but his chest was heaving and his heart pounded inside of his chest.  
Lars groaned inside of his throat, a continual pleasured groan that came from somewhere inside of him. He gritted his teeth as she nibbled on the other side of his belly button.  
“Jesus—fuck!” he grunted out in a hushed voice.  
“Am I hurting you?” she asked him.  
“No! No, no, no, no, no. It's just—God, it feels so good, holy shit!”  
He felt her put her teeth back onto his belly for another grind of her teeth. He stuck out his tongue again and closed his eyes as the pain spiked in her loving caress. He opened his mouth but no sound came out.  
Her teeth were followed by the silken feel of her lips to soothe the pain and the vampire bites on his waist on either side of his belly button. He stretched his arms out from his body, and he panted: he could see feel her nibble upon his skin, even though he knew she had switched up to sweet little kisses. He kept his eyes closed to better take in the feeling down below his waist. Her mouth lifted off of his flesh, and then he smelled her breath and her hair. He opened his eyes to see her rounded, full cheeks and then her dark eyes looming before him under a veil of darkness from the dim light.  
“By the way, I should tell you—this next stint of the tour, Soundgarden is joining us. Sound—effin'—garden.”  
“Effin'?” A smirk crossed her face. “Since when have you said 'effin', Mr. Dirty Mouth?”  
“Just now. It is such a versatile word, don't you know.”  
“What, fuck?”  
“What else?” he pointed out. “Fuck this, fuck that, fuck me, fuck you, it's so fucking perfect, darling.”  
“Perfect like you?”  
“Nah. And who's to say I'm the only one with the dirty mouth? I've heard you curse like a salesman before.”  
“Like a salesman? You mean a sailor.”  
“A what?”  
“Curse like a sailor, baby. Curse like a sailor.”  
“The point is I have heard you before. With all your nipples and nozzles and neckles and neckties.”  
“Neckties?”  
“Neckties. I shoot a pearl of jam onto your collar bone and you wear it to a party and be like 'yeah—'” He clasped a hand onto his chest and ran it down the front of his shirt. “'—I'm Lars' girl. What you gonna do about it?'”  
“Is that all?”  
“Maybe. Unless you wanna put a little work in from your dirty hooters, well, then be my guest.”  
“A little work in?”  
“Yeah. Yank up your shirt and wiggle the ladies about for me.”  
“You just wanna see my titties.”  
“What man doesn't? What man doesn't wanna put his face right into your chest and blow?”  
She burst out laughing and buried her face right into his chest. A smile crept over his face at the feel of her against his body. He felt her hand caress over the exposed skin of his belly; he thought of reached up to rub his hand over her butt, that is until her hand slid over his waist and towards his side. He flashed back on his psychedelic trip earlier and all the strawberries falling from the sky and landing all around him. Was it a dream? Or was it a mere flash back to the times when she fed him strawberries? He had no idea, but he fixed on her touching the soft flesh over his hip and upon his side.  
He swore he smelled the fresh aroma of strawberries floating in from down the hallway, and lucky for him, she lifted herself off of him: wavy locks of hair dangled down to his shoulder and the side of his neck.  
“Come on—Marcia and Sonia got some new ice cream that I think you'd like,” she beckoned him as she rolled onto her back; he sat upright and let his belly hang out from underneath the fastened buttons and over the waist band of his jeans, a thick slab of flesh right smack in the middle of his body. He peered down between his arms at the sight of his belly button staring back at him in the form of a small dark spot. He simply slouched there in the middle of the floor and stared at his own flesh for a moment before she reached underneath his left arm to give him a soft little rub.  
He leapt forward and shot to his feet: the bottom of his shirt covered up his bare skin, but he kept the buttons undone as he ambled down the hall and back to the kitchen to find Marcia setting a white and blue cardboard container on the counter top before her and then turning for the coffee pot for another cup.  
“—if it's too loud, you're too old,” Sonia was saying.  
“YES!” Lars exclaimed and the three women around him burst out into laughter. He raised his eyebrows at the container of ice cream on the counter before her.  
“Where'd you get that ice cream?” he asked her.  
“Oh, it's…” She paused as she read the label on the back of the container, “from that new warehouse over here. Remember that place, Marcia?”  
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, they've got ice cream over there?”  
“Ice cream and all manner of things that are cold and frozen.”  
“Is it strawberry?”  
“It is, as a matter of fact!” Sonia declared. “Strawberry and cream.”  
Marcia opened the cupboard next to her head for a clean bowl and set it down on the counter: she then reached for the ice cream scoop and the container of ice cream to scoop out two large blocks of creamy white ice cream with embedded ribbons of strawberry. She handed him the bowl and a clean spoon, and he eagerly took it for his taking. Sonia meanwhile wrinkled her nose.  
“I keep smelling something stinky, like pot.”  
“It's probably me,” he said with his mouth full.  
“Oh, yeah,” said Mia behind him, “he, Dave, Chris, Jerry, and Layne smoked a bunch of weed during the competition to calm their asses down. Thing is it had a bit of mescaline mixed in so he's still a little off kilter right now.”  
“And very hungry!” he exclaimed, still with his mouth full.  
Mia took a bowl of ice cream for herself and the four of them congregated there in the kitchen around the container of ice cream for a while, and then Lars and Mia returned to the house. At that point, it was almost ten thirty at night, and all he felt like doing was curling up in bed next to her and falling asleep, so he unbuttoned the other buttons and peeled off his shirt for her. He lay his head down on the pillow and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep within mere seconds.  
He woke up to the feel of her hand on his hip: her fingers slithered down onto his thigh, and then back up again onto the round, soft bump of flesh making up his waist. He groaned inside of his throat and then he rested his hand onto the back of hers for a moment.  
Then he lifted up her hand so as to roll out of bed to the bathroom across the hall.  
The mescaline had purified his system and then removed itself out, and now he needed some cold water on his face. He ran the faucet and splashed it onto his skin, and he gasped at the sensation. He snapped his shut to keep the water out from his eyes and blindly switched it off, and then reached to his left for a clean towel. He massaged his face with the soft towel, and then he glanced up at his reflection in the mirror. He gazed into his green eyes and at the dark hairs making up his eyebrows matted to his brow, which loomed underneath the tips of his dark brown bangs. He lifted his head to look on at the rounded, full shape of his face. Maybe that was why Mia found his face so lovely: he had such an odd amalgam of features that he stuck out to her from a crowd.  
The beautiful boy from Denmark.  
Lars folded the towel over length wise and slung it over the metal towel bar, and then took another glimpse at himself in the mirror, at his chest and the middle of his body in particular. He lay a hand on his waist to feel the softness of his skin. If only he knew what she felt.  
He switched off the light and considered heading back into the bedroom, but a slight wave of nausea and a hollow feeling inside of the pit of his stomach stopped him in place in the doorway for a moment.  
Lars headed down the hall to the kitchen for a bite of breakfast.  
He spotted a bundle of bagels next to the toaster. Eager to take the first one, he opened the bag and took out the one on top, and took a bite.  
“Effin' blueberry,” he muttered under his breath. He turned to the refrigerator for a bit of butter or something spread on the inside. Cream cheese would do the trick. He set the container of cream cheese on the counter so as to halve the bagel at the split in the middle.  
He took a clean knife for a knob of smooth cream cheese on both of the halves. He had rinsed off the knife and was about to take a bite when Mia entered the room, wearing nothing but the same teddy she had worn the night before.  
“Cheese—cheese—cheese!” he declared.  
“You like cheese, baby?” she asked with a grin.  
“I JUST LOVE CHEESE!” he exclaimed with his mouth full.  
“Come on—” She clapped her hands. “—today's a Curl Up and Dye day. I'm giving your hair a bath and your bangs a little trim.”  
He ate up his bagel and returned down the hall to get dressed again, and she dressed in her uniform for the day, and they both piled into the car and headed to the salon.  
Lucky for them, they were the soles in there and thus, she washed his hair in the largest, deepest basin with the soft smelling conditioner and then the shampoo.  
“This has aloe and vitamins in it,” she told him as she scrubbed his scalp, “so it'll help your hair feel all soft and silky and help soothe over all these split ends, too.”  
The only other thing he found more pleasuring than her giving love bites on his waist was her scrubbing his scalp and running her fingers through the roots of his hair. He closed his eyes as he took in the bliss of each gyration of her hands and each scrub of the tips of her fingers. The water from the shower head almost tickled him and he shuffled his feet underneath his chair: he let out a giggle at one point.  
“Does that tickle?” And he replied with a giddy little chuckle.  
Once she had rinsed out all the soap from his hair, she guided him to the chair for a quick drying and tying the tarp around his neck underneath his chin. She gave his hair a gentle brushing, starting from his right shoulder and going all the way around the crown of his head to his left shoulder.  
“So how much time do you reckon you can take off?” he asked her at one point.  
“How much?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Well, I've got three weeks of paid vacation with both of my jobs, so I can ask for a whole week off if that would do it.”  
“That would totally do it! We don't go back on the road until—not this Saturday, but the Saturday following that. The twenty fifth.”  
“Alright. I'll get on the phone with Sandra and Dani before you know it, baby doll.”  
She combed his wet hair and grinned at him in the mirror.  
“Oh, your hair's gonna look so gorgeous by the time we're done here!”  
Soon, she reached his right side and then tackled his bangs with the comb and then the scissors. He closed his eyes as she snipped the hair while bringing her scissors down at a vertical angle. He could feel the tiny snippets of hair falling from over his brow and onto his cheek bones. At one point, she gave the cut hair a light brushing with her finger tips.  
“We're actually not supposed to do that, but since you and I are together, I will make an exception.”  
“Gladly!”  
By the time he opened his eyes again, she had trimmed his bangs to where the ends hung over his eyebrows by the length of his pinky finger. She finished the job by giving him another round of the comb and then the brush.  
Mia untied the tarp and he leaned forward to examine his reflection better in the mirror: the crown of his head had a healthy shine to it while his hair all the way around had a lovely smoothness to it, as if she waved a magic wand over his head and removed the split ends that way. His bangs now hugged his brow to accentuate it rather than hide it and make it look more foreboding.  
“Marvelous, darling!” he remarked; she held him from behind and kissed him on the side of the neck. He turned to her with a smirk upon his face when something caught his eye: he stared straight ahead at the crystal glass vase of snowy white and pink lilies on display on the shelf on the other side of the room. He stood to his feet and ambled towards the vase, and took two of the lilies out for a small bouquet: they smelled fresh and crisp, as if they had just been watered and trimmed right out of a garden for her. He returned to her with it in both hands and held it out to her as a token of thanks. Her face lit up in response as she took them.  
“Aw, thank you.”  
The glass front door opened and Jason and Kirk entered the salon, wrapped in black raincoats even though rain lurked about an hour away from Portland.  
“HEY, YOU GUYS!” Lars exclaimed, his voice echoing off the walls of the salon.  
He remained there in the salon for a couple of hours, watching her and her colleagues including Danielle tend to Jason and Kirk's hair, and the hair of other clients. At one point, he thought back to the rhythm he and Dave had thought of during the baking competition and applied it to the cranking of the chairs and the snipping of scissors. It lacked the same vibe but he tried it out nonetheless, and even moved his hands about as if imitating his playing his drums.  
During her lunch break, the two of them stepped outside for a short walk to the cafe across the street from the leather shop.  
They both asked for scones and crustini sandwiches before heading back outside to the small dark blue bench underneath the sun umbrella.  
“A cup of tea!” Lars declared upon taking his seat. “I am teaching you well, skat.” He raised his eyebrows at her.  
“Of course,” she stated in an almost lofty tone, “I must seek out what you like.”  
He licked his lips and glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping on them. The patio hung deserted despite the sunlight peeking through the clouds over their heads.  
“You want another little spankity from the racket later on when I take you back to the Bay Area with me?” he offered in a low voice. “Yes? No?”  
“Later on? We shall see. But right now? Mmm, nah. I kind of want it a little soft right now.”  
“Ah, of course! Soft like my face.”  
“Soft like your tummy.”  
“So shall I put my head on your lap and have you stroke my hair and my gut or shall I shower you with those sweet little kisses that you like?”  
“Head in my lap. I want to love you.”  
He swung his legs around onto the seat of the bench and then lay down on her lap. She stroked his forehead and his fresh cut bangs: her hand smelled of soap and hairspray, but he could care less. He cared about the feeling of the tips of her fingers gliding over his smooth skin.  
“I will bring my boots with me,” she told him, “and that little bondage suit, too. You know, just in case we want to get a little animal at some point.”  
“Of course.”  
He closed his eyes for a moment and then another thought crossed his mind.  
“I still can't believe Ashley cheated on James,” he blurted out.  
“Well—remember, she needed that touch and touching ourselves has its pitfalls.”  
“True. Did she ever said anything about Kurt and how he felt about it?”  
“Nope. Never said a word. I hope he knows something about it. I also hope she was able to get an interview out of him, too.”  
“I also hope that Nirvana makes hell of a debut record at some point later on.”  
“I hope they do, too. Kurt doesn't need that on his conscience. Neither does Ashley.”  
Soon their tea and sandwiches arrived, and Lars sat upright to dig into the crisp sourdough bread on either side of the brie cheese, the sliced ham, and dollop of strawberry jelly. Again with the strawberries!  
He ate up his sandwich when he turned to her with his paper cup of black in his right hand.  
“If only we had my record player here with us,” he said aloud once he swallowed the last bite of crustini.  
“Why is that?”  
“Because I would say let's put on some Green River and Guns 'N Rumors and make love.”  
“Guns 'N what?”  
“Roses! Guns 'N Roses, not Rumors! Fock—oh, screw it. Come here, my sweet love—” He leaned to the side to kiss her on the lips and then on the side of the neck. She pressed a hand into his face to stop him.  
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not in public, big boy!”  
Lars glanced around to find the patio still remained deserted.  
“Let 'em look,” he whispered. “Let's just make a little loving before going back to work—”


	87. Chapter 87

“Elske , I must tell you: Mia and I are going on tour together! She asked her bosses for time off and she was able to take a week off from both jobs. We leave at seven o'clock next Thursday morning, and I am taking her out to the first bar I see. Until then, however, I am merely going to be a man of leisure. I'm eating like a king right now, and my wish is to not be disturbed for a while, my darling.”

“The first thing I ate this morning was a slice of pastrami and, I must say: it's going to be a good day.”

“So I threw out that piece of music Dave and I came up with at the baking competition the other day because it was going to drive me batshit insane if I did nothing. The best way I can describe it is something akin to a samba line, but I can hear the guitar riffs and I can hear James belting it out. My hope is that it can converge together in a fashion the four of us can agree upon and execute in Cliff’s wake for the new album. It is going to be difficult but I have faith in myself, James, Kirk, and Jason. We can do it, just so long as we have got our books and our art… and our news outlet.”

“I think I should have chorizo later on. Or not. I don't know. I miss my babe.”  
“I really do miss her, Elske. We have only been apart for a couple of days and I am already feeling alone again. Yesterday, I strode past a music shop and I spotted a little golden yellow guitar in the window display. It had like a deep violet and royal blue trimming along the edges of the body, and I pictured her with it slung about her body while she performed before a crowd of people in one of the tiny jazz clubs downtown. Remember when I said my latest wet dream was James singing “I Know What Boys Like”by the Waitresses? Well… I must confess that it is losing out to the thought of Mia singing Miles Davis in her raunchy Puerto Rican Spanish. A part of me wants her to forget about the whole baking and hair styling thing and join me in my journey as a musician. I feel she isn't happy working two jobs; I can feel it. She does not want to leave Portland, for sure and I don't blame her for that, either. I left home nearly seven years ago, and those first weeks were difficult, and I cannot say if she can find her own James to rock n’ roll with. But I feel the music in her. I feel it in her how I felt it inside of me when I was a little kid. If she can hear music in a stretch of tarmac, then she has it within her. When I saw this guitar, I wanted to share it with her so much. It was raining outside, too, so it almost felt like a dream.”  
“Mia and I playing jazz in New Orleans. Oh. Oh, okay.”  
“Mia and I playing jazz in Copenhagen. Strip me naked and throw me into an ice bath.

“I just checked the schedule again, and management is sending us back to Seattle come the second week of May. I wonder if there are any shows we can go to prior to our gig?”  
“There is one. They're called Mother Love Bone and they're consisted of two of the guys from Green River and the frontman of Malfunkshun. I shall run it by her when I see her next week.”

“I did what I did for Valentine’s Day again and took my clothes off and did a little photo shoot with the nice camera. This time, however, I actually cleaned my room before I took any pictures. I am contemplating going into town for like a photo album and compiling them all together just for her. It will be my anniversary gift to her when we reach the one year mark. And if you are wondering, Elske, yes. I actually took a few shots of myself with nothing at all. I mean, she has my naked ass and everything numerous times but this time, I must confess, it felt so strange doing it with the camera lens before me.  
“I took a picture from—I still don't know how I managed to pull this off but, I took a photo from the middle of my thigh, so the lens faced me. In other words, I had my body from the waist up within the shot and I kept myself hoisted up on my right elbow. In other words, I took the picture left handed. I might as well have whacked off left handed. That's not to say I haven't, but it's just so strange. I had my hair pushed back and it was still groomed to appear rather fine so I actually looked like a male centerfold straight out from Playgirl or Cosmo. Another goal in life perhaps? Maybe. We shall see. But—and that’s a pretty big but—until then, I believe that will be the centerfold to my little gift to her. Yes, if I can't get into the Playgirl mansion, I’ll keep my membership card and mosey my way back into Mia’s mansion.”

“I can't stop thinking about the song Mia had written. I can't stop feeling it, either. It has got such a Beatles feeling to it. Perhaps it is the opening line of the first verse, “you’ve got to hide your love away.” But the other thing now is she wrote a song about the two of us. She wrote a song for the two of us. I just want to play drums to it, but I cannot say what the music sounds like as of yet. I tried tapping on the cymbals in hopes of catching the rhythm, but it was futile. I need to hear it again. Scratch that, I need to read it in hopes of hearing it inside of my head and my heart. It will drive me crazy if I can't find a way to exorcise it. I have to… I have to, I just, I just…”

“I just jerked off to Deep Purple for the first time in months. Put Highway Star on the record player, sat down on the floor, and spread my legs apart. Might I add, it was rather intense, like I can't recall the last time I tugged at myself so bloody hard and made myself come so much. I also can't be the only one who chokes the chicken to their favorite band. I have done it before several times in the past but this time was particularly significant because of the song. Do you see what I mean, Elske? If I can't open the musical door, I make it open. I pry it open with my groping Danish hands after they've been wrist deep in my own flesh. Mark my words, my darling.”

“Okay. Please, do not tell Mia this, lest I get into huge trouble with her. The very thought of it makes me feel so weird inside; refer back to my whacking off to most of Highway Star to coax out those odd sensations within me. Okay. I don't believe Ashley cheated on James with Kurt. I just don't buy it. We haven't even been back on the road for very long, and it took us all a bit of time before we became intimate with these girls. I think it has to do with it feeling quite sudden, I might say. It's a bit soon, too. Too sudden and too soon. Add to this, Kurt seems far too kind and caring, and towards women especially: I do not believe he would commit and participate in such an act.   
“Granted, I broke the ice with Dave’s girlfriend at the time, but I think he was too clueless to know whether or not the two of them were even a couple, but that's how I see it, and that's just with me, too. This is Kurt we are talking about here. Now if she wanted to break up with James, that's a whole other story. But if she did, why'd Ashley have to go out on a limb like that? Why not just be honest with us all and be done with it? I don't know… I feel weird about it, and I don't really want to bring it up to Mia, either. That's her best friend and my best friend we’re talking about here.  
“But on the other hand, she was crying, crying legitimate tears. And Marcia hugged her. But Mia and Sonia were both dry eyed. But I was still a tiny bit high, too, so for I know, I really might be full of shit and I’m just running my mouth here. But…  
“Now, Elske, I know you are just a black leather bound book, and so that means you are unaware of that nagging feeling. That small voice lurking in the back of your mind that keeps telling you something is terribly wrong, but you are unable to figure it out no matter how much thought you exert into it. It is almost like a brick wall thousands of miles long, and so I cannot see logic, or the truth. The best I can do at the moment is to put it into the archive of my mind under lock and key and hope that I don't accidentally open the vault. I am an excellent secret keeper—like I will take secrets to the grave with me if I must—but when it comes to lying, I am mediocre at best, especially since I have to lie to my girlfriend, and for god knows how long, too. We pretty much know one another down to the bare bones at this point, and the thought of her finding out about it freaks me out. I am my own worst enemy after all. That's why I’ve been so reticent to mirrors for so long.”

“I met another boy in a yarmulke today! He wasn't as well-read and affluent as the one on the plane from Denver, but he was still very smart, though. He told me he wanted to be a civil engineer when he got older, and I must applaud him on that. So that's both hemispheres of the mind I have encountered within a small time frame, and they approached me while wearing yarmulkes I swear this job just gets more interesting.”

“I just weighed myself again. God, I’m getting so big. Thirty five pounds! Thirty five pounds since Mia and I met. I feel fat, but I also feel free. I will say it since I am the only one here: this is where I need to be. I need to be heavy. I need to be able to take a glimpse down and see my gut. I’m Scandinavian: I am meant to be big. I need to be big. What I lose in my nothing of height I must make up in the rest of my body. I have a girl who loves it, too.  
“What's interesting is I don't really have a lot of fat on my body. Yeah, I have a belly, and I have rolls over my hips, and I feel my double chin growing under my jaw, but when I touch myself, there's still some firmness here, like in my arms and my legs. She wasn't exaggerating when she called me chubby and pleasingly plump. Mia was not exaggerating.  
“…  
“Do I have any heavy cream?  
“No. But I do have a couple of beers in my refrigerator door. I have found heavy cream has slightly more upper hand compared to beer. Beer fills me up but cream fills me out, so I am writing ‘heavy cream’ here as a mental note.”

“Ah, I cannot wait to return to Seattle and see everyone again. I can't wait for Mia to join us, either, and my hope is that we can find a guitar at one of the stops and albeit one like the one I saw yesterday: bright and colorful and spicy like her. But I am eager to return to Seattle, and see the gentlemen of Soundgarden, and Mark and Layne and Jerry again.”

“I whacked off again, but this time to the sound of a motorbike revving outside, and then I got a dinner biscuit out of the kitchen. Today has been… interesting so far.”

“And if you are wondering… yes. I also wrote down chorizo in here, too. If I can't pack on a little more weight, I must at least maintain it for myself. And for her.”

“I must confess something else to you, Elske, and one thing I am debating on whether or not I should tell Mia this, too, lest she looks at me like some crazy creep: there's a part of me that wants to get like really fat, like I eat so much that I end up going all the way up to the two hundred pound mark. I just get really big and round. Do it all for her, too. I mean I have the face for it, for God’s sake. And I feel quite good and healthy right now, so I say why the fuck not put it in the cards?

“I also hope we see Trent in Seattle, too. Something about him makes me feel like I have a spiked collar around my neck. A spiked collar with a leash. No, a necktie. A necktie. Mia’s necktie!”


	88. Chapter 88

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The rings around, the rings so sweet,  
> Beside your mind in the summer heat.  
> I can’t believe the things I’ve said..  
> between your eyes, between your legs.”  
> -“Out of Focus”, Love Battery

“I am laying on my back right now. And guess who is next to me as we speak? The answer may surprise, stun, shock, and leave awe in it's wake.  
“Come here, my darling… all of your deliciousness and your scrumptious flavor. Mmm, yes. Oh, my. Oh, my my my.  
“It is so good to see you in my bedroom, in all of your sexiness and all of your ravishing beauty. The maestro is hungry. Never mind, he is starving. Craving for your touch and all of that resides within you. I know you want it, too. Shall we do it here in my room or on the couch?  
“The kitchen? I like you.  
“No need. I always sleep in my undies anyway.  
“Okay. I am taking seat with you right between my legs. And now enough talk: let's get started. Let me make love to you for my breakfast.  
“Yes, right into my belly and all over. Mmm, yes! It feels so good, so damn good. Ah, yes, a sweet rub right there in the real tender part of my tum. Wait a minute. What's this now? Is that—that what I think it is? Oh, yes, baby it is! Give Daddy his sugar. Sugar and cheese. Cheesecake, that's it! The perfect combination of sugar and cheese! Give me your cheesecake a la mode. Cheesecake from the finest place I know and want to keep hidden. Cheesecake for the amazing Lars. Cheesecake for the amazingly hungry Lars!  
“Is there something else in here? A nice crunch, indeed. Creamy, sweet, loaded with all of the finest of flavors like a piece of the finest art you've ever seen. Am I right?  
“Oh Lord, this is going right to my waist and my thighs. I told you, I told you I would fatten up from this, did I not? Oh how could I resist you, darling? Oh, mama, beckon me inside.  
“Whenever I say ‘oof’, it is both a mating call as well as a means of relieving myself. So don't mind me when I say ‘oof’ right now as I fill my gullet with everything I see here before me. I wish for a bit more of this, though. I just want a little bit more than this. Please. Behage. Behage! I need you. I’ve been a good boy, I swear. Look, I will get down on my knees and beg it from you if that's what you want. This is no little Danish boy begging his Nana for a drum kit right now. This is a little Danish boy begging for it in his own house.   
“I am yours. Please, stay with me. Stay with me and show my tummy some more love. He’s lonely, he needs your love and your kind caress. Please. Please please me.  
“Look, I will make more sense of it and put in a little extra spice if that’s what you want. Here—see? Oh. Ohhhhh. Oh fucking hell, that's gorgeous. I am utterly weak at the knees from this. Help me. God, help me! I am sliding down the side of the doorway onto the floor because my knees have completely turned to jelly. Do you see what you have done to me? I want you so bad. Give it to me right now, I need this. Going not only to my waist and my hips but to my knees as well. My goodness, this is heavy. But, wait, what are you doing? What the deuce are you doing?  
“Oh, I see what you are doing. Oh. OH.  
“Stroke the shafts of Kim Thayil and Ben Shepherd’s guitars and give it to me, dear heart!  
“Right into my mouth. On my tongue. On my tongue! And down my throat.  
“Oh, that’s yummy. Splendid!  
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, give me more. I am going on tour soon, I need my belly to feel full all of the time until the next gig. Another lick of cream for the famished fellow in his underwear, behage. More cream! More cream! On my way to mindless self-indulgence, mange tak.  
“I have a serious problem and that is I ran out of cream to lick just now. Fock. There is plenty of crunch left, though. Sweet, sweet crunch on the bottom and near the opening where you let me inside. But cream is cream, and Daddy needs sugar and cream with his cup of coffee. The crunch comes in when he needs it dipped into the coffee and then eaten up. I drink your coffee last when there is nothing left, darling. Oh, hell with it. Hvor er min kaffe.”

“Some days I feel like Han Solo, other days I feel like David Bowie. Some moments I feel like David Byrne, other moments I feel like I should eat another piece of cactus.”

“I’m dying here. Well, not literally. But I am aching for more of that lusciousness on my lips and my tongue again. I need to be right next to it. I need it, damn it! Ugh, where'd she go? Where did her Rubenesque self go? Come back here and thicken up the maestro, baby!”

“Now, where was I? Ah, yes! Cream and crunch. Right. Come back to me, skat. I am dipping my fingers right into the coffee. Give it to me. As I have said, I have been a good boy. I must have this!  
“Oh, yeah, girl, that’s so lovely. Smooth, undeniably delicious, still with a bit of crunch but there's that softness still in there. That delicate softness, and that wet skin on top. Just put it right on my tongue like you would a paper thin wafer. Mm, yes. Yes, that's yummy and you do that like a pro!”

“There is an awful lot here I am seeing. Oh, no, it's more than alright, though. It's all so good and it's all so good for me. When we are done here, I am going to draw myself again. Hold up that mirror over there and help me out with the pose, pretty please. This time I am using actual art tools and not one of those little pens you find in hotel rooms everywhere you go. Actual tools and good paper.”

“Good Christ Almighty, I am so full. You were quite rich and voluptuous this time ‘round, weren't you? Yeah, Mr. Lars likes it like that. You know he does, he does so much, hence why is the maestro. Hang on, darling… let me lay here for a moment so as to catch my breath. Oh—oof. I am not sweating, though. But I feel warm. Yeah, my belly is nice and warm, isn't he? Rather tight, might I add. I am almost afraid to move.  
“If I have to lay on the floor with the pellet of paper and the pencils and the markers, then so be it.  
“No, my stomach doesn't ache. It just feels incredibly stuffed full, like a Christmas goose with all the trimmings. I swear to my own private god, if I eat another bite of anything right now, I might develop my own gravitational pull. I already feel like I have Saturn inside of me.”

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.”

“OOF! Ow.”  
“I haven't felt this klutzy since the Daves and I tried to play N. I. B. during a rainstorm. No, the door was closed.  
“Oh. God. My tummy. I am just going to lay here some more. Talk amongst yourselves. I am going to close my eyes for a moment and hope the feeling eases up a bit. I was hungry and now the good boy needs a moment alone. Another kiss? Another kiss. Another series of kisses? Another series of kisses!”  
“Okay, here we go.”  
“I am going to get naked. I am going to streak. Don't look—don't look! Don't focking look! Okay. Now you can look. Where are my pencils?”

“Over, under, round and round, soon your feet won't touch the ground… because they're laying extended out from your boney as all hell ankles.”  
“What was that rhyme again? Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; when she what she had done, she gave her forty-one. Something like that?  
“Wow, my knees are thickening up quite a bit. Thick knees for a thick boy, haha!  
“My thighs and hips are smooth like butter, even with hair covering the skin. They don’t have the same curvature as that of Mia’s but they are still nicely curved. They’re near perfect, nearly perfect for holding up all of my extra pounds. They’re holding up quite nicely, too: after what went down earlier, I have a feeling they’re going to be a little bit fuller going into this next gig.  
“Very little hope for the length, though. I can’t ever see it growing larger, that is if all the calories and the love making will help him get bigger. I do not believe I will ever be as large as James, or as sculpted as Kirk, but this is what I have got for me. He knows how to have fun, too.  
“Now, the middle of my body is an utter gold mine for shading because it’s so... so... cute. It’s so cute and rounded here. I’m so soft, and so soft looking, even with my stomach stretched to the fullest extent and being big like Buddha. The feeling inside of my stomach will reconcile how I feel about the rest of my body, including my face. I almost don’t even want to stop drawing the middle of my body: just the way my belly hangs out from my torso now is so sensual, and my belly button almost looks like an actual button, holding back all of the roundness inside of me. I have a couple more stretch marks on my waist now, too. They’re tiny but I can see them, and I can feel them with the tips of my fingers. I have more tiny ones on my hips, or maybe it’s just my imagination.  
“Speaking of my love handles, I had to stop what I was doing right then to feel their softness. It was touching marshmallows, compared to the large watermelon residing in my belly at the moment.  
“And then there’s my chest. Oh, my gosh, my chest. That little dip in between my nipples and the fact it just looks strong.  
“Fewer things in life are more difficult than drawing your own arms when you’re drawing a full body self portrait, especially if you’re lying down. The one on the bottom is the less difficult, but what is a man to do for the drawing arm?”

“Come here, darling.”

“My shoulders and my neck next. Phew, talk smooth, especially that little curve at the base of my neck.  
“Okay! So now that I have my body drawn, I am going to take a break, and then return after another round of sexiness, albeit one that tastes of pasta, tomatoes, and passion.  
“Okay, pasta checked out but there are tomatoes abound. Come to papa, babies! Get in my belly, all of you.”

“OOF! Okay, let’s do this again. What’s next, my face and my hair? Yes. Ugh.  
“Easier said than done. Not because of the obvious scars I am still licking, but because I don’t know how the masters before me did it. I don’t know Van Gogh or Frida did it. Then again, Vincent sat down most times and Frida was disabled. I’m just some dude thinking he’ll make his way into the Playgirl mansion at some point in life. Or Cosmo. I hope they take ‘just fucked’ drawings, and I duly hope this is erotic enough. Then again, there’s always my very own private mansion.  
“Okay—that chin, that skin underneath, that rounded jawline, and that smoothed skin... my lips, my nose, my cheeks, and my eyes. That brow, and the streamlined dark hair that resides along the edge of it. My bangs and the hair I can see.  
“Time now for the extra fun part. Time to have fun, darlings!  
“I am trying very hard not to fall in love with myself. But I have made love again and again, and the fact I am able to do it as well as perform for thousands of people makes me feel so much love for this beautiful body of mine. Very beautiful indeed, my darlings.  
“Another side to my face is it has an almost smoldering appearance. I stand out and scorch the earth, like what happens if one were to stare at the full moon for a bit too long.  
“I am the moon and the stars, but I am the earth. Saturn’s rings about my head, Jupiter residing in my belly, and I am going to make you figure out where Uranus is with me.  
“A lot of weird shadows here as well: about my face in particular. I might lose the bangs at some point in the future, like I will make them grow out so I can tuck them behind my ears, just so my face looks a bit more masculine. My actual hair on the other hand, though, no way. I will go completely bald before I cut off all of this long hair.  
“I am definitely growing a beard, for sure. Or maybe just a mustache. Then again, I might look funny with a mustache. I am putting a lock of hair over my lip to simulate it, and—maybe? It can’t be the mustaches of decade prior, but I am feeling it. I already want to make love again and let the hair on my face do much of the talking.  
“I kind of want to draw like little flowers around me to show that I am part of the earth and the eternal beauty that is nature. I am Mother Nature’s son. But all I can do are these tiny silly little hippie daisies around my fat knees. That is something I will have to work when I have a moment on this tour. I’ll look out for a sketchbook of some sort and do studies of plants and things. I will also keep an eye out for a travel set of some sort. Got that? Darling? Are you still with me? Darling? Baby? Honey pie? Skat? Daddy’s little whore? Guess not.  
“A few more bright colors for a bit of dream. Now, should I put something bright and colorful behind me? It’s already quite bright and colorful, though. Like an impressionist work that visited the psychedelic era. Damn cactus.  
“Well! Upon sitting upright, let me say that I impress myself. May my hand and my arm grow weary and old with time and exhaustion, but may this drawing last a lifetime, alongside all of the Polaroids I took of myself. May it all be more of a memory than my own flesh. The million dollar question now is do I keep this for myself and browse about for a frame of some sort—it is a big drawing, about eighteen inches long and twelve inches wide—or do I give this to my parents? Or, better yet, do I give this to Mia? Do I dare give her this beautiful psychedelic disaster along with the new Polaroids for my anniversary gift to her?”


	89. Chapter 89

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “And how we'd wished to live in the sensual world;  
> you don't need words, just one kiss, then another.  
> Stepping out of the page into the sensual world.”  
> -“The Sensual World”, Kate Bush

It was morning when Lars rolled up the long life sized drawing of himself and tucked it into the corner of the room next to his tennis racket. He still could not decide on whether or not he wanted to give it to Mia or for his parents to have in their home. Then again, if he gave it to his parents, they couldn't hang it up in their living room. Or perhaps they would and he was merely letting his imagination overcome his own logic again. Either way, he still had not made the decision yet, even with all of the drawing's beauty and finesse with the pencil fading into the colored pencil.  
He also couldn't decide if he wanted to bother with putting on a shirt for the day, and he figured to start it out with a little shower first. He padded into the bathroom, wearing nothing but his shorts, the band of which clung onto his hip bones. He stared at himself in the mirror, at his chest and his shoulders, and then at his belly, and his hips and thighs. The skinny little immigrant boy with an out of context face was now obscured from view by the beautiful boy with a thick, sensual waist and long smoothed out hair.  
He thought of choking himself with just his first two fingers on either hand, but he wondered if he would take it a little too far given he was all alone in the house. Instead he ran his fingers through his hair, starting from the roots behind his ears and going out, to take a better look at the inside of his arms, at those thick sinewy muscles on his upper arms. He folded his arms over his chest to touch his upper arms. His skin was soft and silky to the touch, much like the smoothest of cotton, and yet everything inside kept its firmness.  
“Oh, I feel good,” he said to himself as he slid his hands onto his chest and down over his nipples. “I feel—exquisite.” His breath shortened, as if he had slipped into iced water, when the tips of his fingers and his hands made contact with the top part of his belly.  
“Madly in love,” his voice broke into a soft moan, “madly in love with myself and my body. Dybt forelsket. Gal i kærlighed med mig selv og min krop.”  
He hugged himself around his waist to take in the rather velvety flesh there. Oh, that flesh, that plush healthy pillow all around his waist as a token of all the love he had taken in for himself. The feeling was very much akin to masturbation, but every ounce of arousal had radiated out toward the rest of his body as opposed to merely centering upon his genitals.  
He closed his eyes and brought his hands up to his face to feel his skin there, that mismatched piece of his skin he had found repulsive and too strange to love for so long, and now he recognized its gentleness and its smoothness underneath his chin and along the sides of his neck. So lovely! Even unwashed, it all reminded him of touching melted unsalted butter. All the love coming from the taste of butter resting upon his tongue.  
And then he stopped, halted right there in the middle of his bathroom floor and opened his eyes to look at his own green irises gazing back at him.  
“Er det for meget?” he asked aloud. He examined his own beauty, still keeping his fingers pressed to his face. He was still just a boy, a young man carrying some extra pounds, and yet he never felt fuller and more alive in his life. He took in a deep breath of air, so deep in fact that his whole chest swelled up, and then he exhaled, feeling every inch of his body relaxing and filling up with oxygen. He did it again, this time letting his belly hang out with his incoming breath, and he felt even fuller and more nourished upon exhaling. His mind opened with clarity, more so than with the mescaline in his veins; and he lowered his hands down to his collar bones to feel himself once again. He thought about leaning back against the wall to touch himself some more, but he needed a shower. His body needed to feel the warm water against his skin.  
He peeled off his underwear and placed it on the counter next to the sink. Before climbing into the tub and onto the thick ivory white bath mat, he pressed the palms of his hands upon the pillowy pockets of flesh over his hips.  
“That's perfect,” he muttered in a husky voice, letting his fingers glide over the skin. “That's all perfect.”  
He then reached forward to switch on the water and temper it to just the right amount of warmth. He stuck one foot into the tub first, then his arm, then his head, followed by his whole body, and then his other foot. He bowed his head and let all the water cascading through the faucet pour over the smooth hair and the skin on his shoulders: he stared down at his body, this lovely temple right beneath his head, holding him and keeping him grounded.  
“I am part of the earth,” he whispered aloud as he felt the water wash over his face and his neck. “Jeg er en del af jorden. I am the son of the earth and the receiver of everything she gives to me.”  
He massaged his belly to let the water wash over him like a river. He thought about all of the food that he had eaten and would be willing to eat even more: it all came from the earth, and Mia and his mother were always the ones who prepared it for him. He was about to turn around to begin washing his hair when something outside of the shower caught his eye. Her face lit up when she saw him in there.  
“Oh, hi! I thought you wouldn't show up for another few hours given the flight and all. How'd you get in here?”  
“The door was unlocked and Kirk gave me a ride,” she explained in a loud enough voice for him to hear over the water. He flashed her a smirk and then he turned around while in place there on the bath mat.  
“You wanna come in?” he offered.  
“Gladly. We can wash each other's hair again!”  
Lars pressed his back against the wall as he watched Mia kick off her shoes and her socks, and then peel off her pedal pushers and her blouse. He pushed his bangs back off of his forehead and onto the front edge of his head as she unhooked her bra and took off her peacock blue panties. Before she stepped into the tub, she turned to her purse on the counter and took out a small bright pink bottle of lubricant. He knew what she wanted!  
She put some of the pearly white gel onto two of her fingers and he thought of the necktie from before as she rubbed it on between her legs. She then stepped inside, and pulled the curtain closed behind her. She put her arms around his waist as the water poured down between the insides of her forearms and the sides of his belly like a brook. Droplets of water trickled down the left side of his chest and onto his side.  
“My goodness, you're getting so big. A little bigger, and fuller, and rounder, and thicker than ever before—and seeing you all wet makes you even more voluptuous.”  
“Who are you calling 'voluptuous'?” he echoed the word by emphasizing every syllable; he squeezed her hips before he slid his hands down the curvature of her bare butt to give her a couple more squeezes.  
“I brought some chorizo with me,” she told him over the rush of the water.  
“Oh boy!” He moved his head forward to give her a kiss on the lips, a kiss covered in fresh warm water. She gazed into his eyes, her expression radiating with warmth and love for him.  
“Shall we?” he asked her as a piece of her hair clung to his shoulder.  
“We shall,” she replied, keeping one hand on the wall as she reached to his left for the bottle of conditioner. He held still as he watched her pop it open with the pad of her thumb.  
“I'm just imagining your tummy getting all nice and full to the brim again,” she confessed as she tipped the nozzle of the bottle over the crown of his head. She tried to set down the bottle but she ended up dropping it onto the bath mat instead. But neither of them cared about it as she massaged the conditioner onto his scalp and all through his hair from the roots outward. She ran into a few tangles near the bottoms of the hair, thus she rubbed the conditioner into them rather than running through them.  
“Yeah, you would like that, wouldn't you?” he asked her as she moved her hands to the base of his head. “All full of pasta and pastries and all manner of things so I'm even fuller than I am right now.”  
“Oh—Oh, yes. And then I very gently make love to you. All of the gentlest and sweetest of love.”  
Once she had ran out of all of the conditioner, he crouched down to pick up the bottle to do the same for her hair. He caught a whiff of strawberries from her crotch. She knew what he wanted!  
He picked up the bottle without taking his eyes off of her thick thighs and stood back up to look at her straight on. He tipped the bottle over the palm of his right hand and then, still keeping his eyes on her, he set the bottle down on the shelf next to them. He rubbed his hands together and did the same thing she did with him: beginning from the roots on the crown of her head and going out through the wavy strands of dark hair.  
“You smell good,” he told her.  
“Already?”  
“Of course. I feel I could eat you right up, right here, right now. With all of the water running over us and everything.”  
“Well, what's stopping you, big boy?”  
He leaned in to kiss her on the lips once more. He ran his hands down her back to tug in her closer to him: the soft pillowy flesh of her breasts pressed up against his nipples. His hands caressed the curvature of her lower back as the water washed down over his forearms, and his hands, and her hair: the bottom of the strands of hair matted and clung to the backs of his hands like a series of tentacles.  
His hair, meanwhile, had been pushed off to the side from her washing, but it still clung to his shoulder and the left side of his back.  
He removed his mouth off from her lips to gaze into her eyes yet again.  
“I had a feeling you would come to seduce me once again,” he told her as he pressed her hips closer to him.  
“Of course,” she said in a voice so light it was drowned out by the rush of the water around them. There was a loud thud right beneath them, and they both glanced down at the bar of soap resting on the mat next to Lars' left foot.  
“You wanna get that?” he asked her.  
“What, you want me to wash you some more?”  
“Behage, min sexet pige.” He winked at her and she crouched down to pick up the soap using only her thumb, her index finger, and her middle finger. She stood back up for the wash cloth, and rubbed one side of it onto the threaded surface. She then rubbed the cloth onto his chest and his collar bones. He closed his eyes as she washed his shoulders and his arms; he relaxed at the feel of the soaped up cloth on his belly and his hips.  
He could feel her massaging his belly: the threaded feeling of the cloth on his drenched skin made his toes curl and brought a gentle groan from the inside of his throat. Then she moved down to his hips and his thighs.  
“Getting quite chubby, I see,” she noted in an eager tone of voice; she hung there for a moment to let the water wash away the soap.  
“But of course, skat—” He gasped at the feel of her lips on his hip bone.  
“The fact you—you can still feel my bones even with all the thickness on my body,” he remarked as she moved down his legs with the cloth. She hesitated again to let the soap fall away again; he gasped at the light caress of her fingers upon his knees and down his shins to his ankles. Like light feathers upon that spare skin making up the front of his legs. No place to hide now, especially with the water cradling their naked bodies with soft warmth from the breast of Lover Earth herself.  
The water washed over his skin to rid of the soap suds, and then she held the cloth by the corners before his face.  
“My turn now?” he asked aloud as he took the cloth from the bottom corners. He did the same thing she did with the bar of soap, except she was careful to turn around so her bare back and butt faced him. He let his hand go where it wanted along her arms and her shoulders: keeping his first two fingers underneath the cloth, he caressed her breasts and the smooth rounded curve of her belly, and in turn let the soap trickle down to her thighs. He moved his free hand to her crotch as he fondled the curve of her body. He tilted his head to kiss the side of her neck.  
She smiled and groaned inside of her throat, and then he brought the cloth down to her hips so his face hung right before the back of her thigh. All of the scratches and the wounds on her body had healed with time and care, but there was a rather large bruise on the back of her thigh. Through the water collecting in his eyes, he examined it was a series of bruises, compiled on top of one another as if something or someone had beaten her there several times.  
He shook his head to stay in the mood and continued to wash her legs, all the way down over her knees and her lower legs to her ankles.  
Lars stood back up to let her rinse and then he held her from behind again.  
“I see you've been eating quite well yourself,” he noted with a frisky smile and a wink from the water in his eyes.  
“Well, of course. Never trust a skinny baker after all.”  
He tilted his head again to kiss her neck once more before she reached over for the bottle of shampoo on the shelf, and nearly knocking it over in the process, but she caught herself. She handed him the bottle for a pair of squeezes for the both of their heads: he started washing his hair first and then he squeezed out another bit, about the size of a nickel, for her hair. She tilted her head back to take in the massaging feeling of his fingers on her scalp: he knew she knew what it was like to lay on the receiving end of one of her caresses for him.  
She then whirled around, the ends of her hair slapping the skin on his chest like a bull whip. She shoved her tongue in between his teeth, and they locked lips to keep the water and the shampoo out of their mouths. He closed his eyes to take in the feeling of the inside of her thigh against his hip, and he could feel the lube on her clit right over his shaft. He set the bottle of shampoo on the shelf so he had both hands for her.  
They were doing it. They were doing it right there in his shower.  
His bangs matted over his forehead while her hair stuck to his shoulder. He breathed harder at the feel of her warmth. He thought about thrusting forward but he need not risk her falling down: instead, he grabbed her butt with both hands. She steadied herself with both palms of her hands on the wall behind him as they made love there with the water pouring all around them and washing them both clean. Her tongue ran along the edges of his teeth; the skin on her butt and her lower back never felt so smooth with the water.  
She slipped her tongue out of his mouth to stare into his face again: droplets of water clung to the right side of her face and her eyes looked so clear and crisp to him, like the first breath of fresh air following the clearing out of a hurricane.  
“I'll give you some chorizo now,” she told him with a wink.  
“Okay!” He reached to his right to switch off the water and they both stood there with their hair and bodies dripping wet and smelling fresh from soap and suds. Mia was careful to step out of the shower first and then guide him out of the bathtub: she reached for the towels on the hook next to the shower.  
Soon the two of them were dried off but had no desire to dress up again: she took the chorizo out of the package on the counter and made four thick patties with it in both palms of her hands, all the while remaining bare chested and wearing nothing but a towel around her waist. Once the meat started cooking however, she washed her hands and returned to the bathroom for her clothes: meanwhile, he kept an eye on it to make sure no plumes of smoke emerged from the bottom of the skillet. She returned with her blouse and her panties back on when the chorizo started sizzling in the oil.  
She served herself and Lars the patties about an hour before they had to leave for the airport.  
The spice knocked him right between the eyes and almost brought him to his knees right there on the floor of his living room. Heat surged up into his face and made his heart hammer inside of his chest with each and every bite of chorizo. Such bliss! Such bliss than can only be matched with the bliss associated with love making! Once he reached the final bite of his second patty, Lars leaned his head back against the top of the couch and relaxed to better feel the warmth, the warmth of love and that full feeling he craved so much. He wanted to nurse the feeling for a moment before he stood to his feet and put on clean clothes for their flight up ahead.  
In time, he locked up his house and he led Mia to his car in the driveway, and they headed to the airport to meet up with James, Kirk, and Jason. He watched the gentlemen of Soundgarden walking towards the gate with their overnight bags over their shoulders: Chris wore his black leather jacket with a homemade Soundgarden patch on his left sleeve while Kim had on a heavy dark knit sweater, and Matt and Hiro both bore black raincoats over faded blue jeans and black rubber boots, even though all of the winter rain had cleared away and left the sky that radiant bright blue over the San Francisco area.  
Lars missed Ben. He felt him to be a better fit for Soundgarden than Hiro even though they all appeared to be friendly with one another. But there was something about that tall boy with the nappy punk rock haircut and the rough attitude. Something that could give them that Midas touch.  
But they boarded the plane and he was eager to snuggle up next to Mia in the window seat of first class for the two hour long flight.  
“Have you flown first class before?” he asked her as she took her seat with her bag in her lap.  
“I haven't, no.”  
“Oh, darling, you are going to love it. And you are going to love this upcoming week here, too.”


	90. Chapter 90

Lars lay on the hotel bed with his bare naked legs stretched out and his feet pointed straight up from the foot of the bed. He had already taken off his shirt and began contemplating taking off his underwear. His skin glowed from the rush of adrenaline running through his veins, and his fingers ached from holding the drumsticks for so long.  
What a show that night! They were about to debut a new song when the whole crowd began chanting “Master! Master!” and they played “Master of Puppets” for about twenty minutes: he thought the lasagna Mia had made for the four of them there in the room wasn't going to hold up inside of his stomach, but she had fed him three large helpings, one more than James, which kept him going all evening.  
He pulled his knees up from the top of the bed and separated his thighs so she could see the space between his legs upon entering the room. But he relaxed right there on the bed to bring his heart beat down so as to fall asleep with ease later that night.  
He lay there with his eyes closed, feeling his pulse pound away in his ears and in his neck. He thought of splashing warm water on his face when he heard the door unlock and then swing open behind the corner in front of the foot of the bed. Her footsteps padded across the carpet before him, but he never opened his eyes. He merely lay there with his legs bent and spread apart a few inches for her, and his arms held out from his body as if he had been pushed onto his back on the bed.  
“Lars?” she asked him in a sweet voice. He never moved, pretending to be asleep, and then she caressed the front of his left leg: that sensitive, delicate skin with nothing more than nerves and hard bone underneath it. He gasped at the feathery feeling of her fingers over his skin and jerked his legs back from that side of the bed. She burst out laughing as his eyes popped open and his chest heaved from the shock.  
“I brought some things from the little market across the street,” she told him, holding up the brown paper sack in her other hand. “Some of those little cakes—”  
“Nah, darling, I need some focking oxygen—” He lay his head down on top of the pillow and sighed through his parted lips. He never broke out a sweat but he still felt warm from the rush, and he needed to catch his breath still.  
“—and a box of wine,” she finished.  
“That, too.” He sat upright to look at her face to face: he could feel the flesh on the lower part of his belly spilling out a bit over the band of his underwear, and, after she set the sack down on the floor next to the bed, she reached underneath his elbow to give him a little pat. He lifted his arms so she could massage her hand over his skin.  
“So cute,” she said under her breath. “So very cute and so very hot.”  
“I'd ask you to rub my belly for me but I must confess I am not that full anymore.”  
“Let us change that,” she told him with a wink, and she stooped down for the sack on the floor, and took out the bottle of wine from its hiding place next to the box of chocolate cakes. Lars lay down on his side and rested the side of his head in the palm of his hand as if he was modeling for her.  
“Darling—darling, please,” he begged her.  
“What?”  
“I must sleep, Mia, darling baby girl. I need to calm my tits and fall asleep so I can perform for you on this next gig, darling.”  
“Let's put some wine in you, baby boy.”  
“What kind of underwear are you wearing right now?”  
“Wha-ha-hat?” she exclaimed, laughing.  
“I mean it. What kind of underwear are you wearing right now? Lacy? Silky? Going commando?”  
“Why would I go commando?” She opened the box of wine for him and took out the smoked bottle. She cut through the seal with her thumb nail and then unscrewed the lid.  
“Why not? Before you walked in, I thought of going commando myself.” He flashed her a mischievous grin and then she rolled her eyes in response.  
“Si, si, si, toma tu medicina, chico rico,” she told him, tipping the mouth of the bottle towards his lips. He leaned back a bit onto his other shoulder but he still took a rather large swig of that lush red wine. It was nothing fancy, but he swallowed it down and felt it go right to his stomach and his blood. He lay down on his back all the way once she lifted the bottle from his face. She stood there with the bottle in her hand while she watched him roll his head to the side. He stared at the wall next to him as he listened to her jacket and jeans rustling as she took them off.  
The wine collected and dissolved inside of his stomach and he lay still there with his pulse continuing to thump inside of his ears. He sniffled and swallowed before rolling his head back over to see her stooping down for a pair of glasses out of the floor cabinet on the other side of the room; he could see she had on black lace panties. She lifted the bottle again as she poured two glasses, one for the each of them. She turned to face him and he parted his lips at her.  
“I suppose you want me to sit up,” he teased her as she sashayed across the room towards him.  
“How else are we to have the wine, baby boy?”  
He lifted himself onto his elbows and then reached out with his left hand for the glass. He inched across the bed to let her on top next to him. His fingers ached and he pulsated them to keep the blood flowing.  
“I'll probably have to put bandages on my fingers if I'm going to play for as long as I did tonight,” he told her, taking a sip from his glass and glancing down at his belly, bulging out a little bit from his reclination on his elbow. His mouth twisted up in a smirk over his face.  
“I can picture myself barely sleeping tonight,” he confessed in a husky voice, “except for like some—I don't know—four hours where I will finally doze off. And when that happens, I shall dream of you and me dancing in the moonlight, and you are wearing a slinky bright red dress, and I am wearing nothing. And then after we tango in the night, I shall recite to you some poetry in Danish.”  
“Poetry? In Danish? You naughty boy.”  
“How is that naughty?”  
“Because I can only imagine what you will write for me. It doesn't help that, even though you speak it to me, I barely know a word.”  
“I must teach you then,” he offered her. “'Jeg synes er du sexet' is 'I think you are sexy.' 'Jeg vil elske med dig' is 'I want to make love to you', while 'jeg er vild med dig' is 'I am crazy about you.' 'Jeg har brug for din kærlighed' means 'I need your love'. On the other hand, something a bit more specific is 'jeg elsker dine bløde læber', meaning 'I love your soft lips.' And of course, 'jeg elsker dig' is 'I love you.'  
“You know, Spanish and French are the true lover's languages,” she pointed out, swirling her wine. “There's something just so sexy and torrid about both of those languages.”  
“What, you don't believe Danish can be erotic?”  
“It's very guttural and throaty, like German. And yet it seems to slip and slide around like a—a wet horny boy in a shower.”  
“Anyone who speaks Norwegian will tell you Danish is just Norwegian with a mouth full of mashed potatoes. I like that one, though.”  
“What is 'I love your soft lips' again?”  
“'Jeg elsker dine bløde læber.' 'Bløde.' Sounds like 'blow me.'”  
She burst out laughing at that.  
“You're not suggesting, are you?”  
“Eh, if you want. I do not know about you, but I have got all night, honey pie.”  
He tipped the glass back for another sip, and then he put his free hand behind his head while he kept staring on at his belly, the low rise of flesh in the middle of his body. She was right there, and he knew she wanted to touch him: he could feel it growing between the two of them again.  
“You want me to get all soft and wet for you again?”  
“Again, if you want. Wet, definitely. For sure. On the other hand, I don't know about soft.”  
“I am soft, though,” she pointed out.  
“Darling, I have about twenty five pounds of fat on my body right now, most of which is centered around my hips and my waist. I feel pretty soft, like a bit of kringle accompanied with whipped cream and strawberry jam. Or a danish of cream cheese and baked in lots of butter.”  
“Eat lots of butter,” she stated, raising her glass.  
“Eat lots of butter,” he echoed, raising his glass and they clanked them both together at the edges before taking a drink at the same time.  
“Not like me, though. I am soft. I am supposed to be soft for you.”  
“You don't think I am soft?”  
“You are, baby. Soft and sweet and pleasantly round.”  
She lowered herself onto her back and then onto her side. She bumped out her hip so as to emphasize the curves of her body; she held the wine glass in her right hand so she could touch his face and the plush skin underneath his chin.  
“I have always loved this little double under your chin,” she remarked. “This little patch of silky skin right here. I always want to touch it and kiss it.”  
“Very delicate part of the body—all around the neck. My neck, in particular.”  
She brought herself closer to his face and closed her eyelids part of the way to give him that come hither look.  
“You are just an adorable—unbelievably sexy, chubby little boy with lots of gorgeous hair.”  
“The best thing to come out of my round face,” he admitted.  
“Aside from your soft lips—”  
She leaned forward and kissed him right on the mouth. He shifted his weight at the feeling; he never lifted his hand, and he need not to do so.  
A gentle groan emerged from her throat as she lifted her free hand and placed it right on his chest. He thought about how he wanted to grow a beard for her: the thought of the edges of his facial hair brushing against her skin forced his toes into a tight curl. He seized his knees back towards his chest and crossed his feet at the ankles. A little quickie before going to bed.  
He then thought about the things he had written in his journal right at that moment, especially since, once the adrenaline started to subside, he realized she never brought up James and Ashley one time during the flight or any given time whatsoever. He knew James never liked to engage in a full fledged talk about anything, especially since after Cliff passed, so that did not cross his mind in any way at all. But right as she kept her lips pressed onto his mouth, he wondered if it meant anything to her at all, especially given it involved both of their best friends.  
But she was kissing him and giving him all of those loving touches; there was no way he could bring it up to her right at that moment. The thought escaped his mind when the tips of her fingers stroked over his nipples and the dip in his chest. She then lifted her lips off of his plush cherry skin to gaze into his eyes.  
“You know—” She showed him a smile. “All of the beautiful fat on your body has more of a purpose than pleasing me.”  
“Does it, now?” he teased her, feeling his face growing warm.  
“And I want you to know—right now—that whenever you smile, and you've got this nice blush to your skin, your face gets so full and sweet, like a ripe strawberry.”  
He shrugged, not knowing what to say right then.  
“I have always,” she confessed in a low voice, “wanted to make you stronger and make you go the distance. I knew you would from the first time I watched you play.”  
“I am the spine after all,” he told her. “The drummer is the spine. The band must keep up with him.”  
“Maestro—” she whispered, and she brought her lips back onto his for another loving caress.  
And much to Lars' surprise, he did sleep rather well that night, and he did dream of the two of them dancing in the moonlight. But he awoke to darkness around him, albeit for a couple of minutes, but it was long enough for him to glance over at her sleeping silhouette next to him. He wanted to keep a secret a secret, but he would have to make an exception at some point during this tour. She knew something he didn't, and he needed to know about it, especially if they were in a full on relationship at that time. He fell asleep with the mental note placed firm inside of his mind.


	91. Chapter 91

“I just want to eat so many strawberries right now. Just stuff my ass with ripe strawberries and caramel and whipped cream and then go about my merry day. My merry day with a belly full of strawberries.”

“I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where the fuck I'm going.”

“Where are the strawberries? Where's my pen? Where's my vodka?  
“There is no vodka, but rather there is that box of wine.  
“It's too early for wine. I need to eat something. There are those cakes.  
“I'm so thirsty, though. Too—effin—thirsty.  
“Too FOCKING thirsty. God, I need to get that bloody word out of my head.  
“Where is she? Where did Madame Mia go? She's not next to me. Where is she? I hope she's downstairs cooking me something.  
“Hang on, hang on, I am still at the hotel? Where am I?”

“Six thirty. Let's see… Seattle. Seattle! Again! Ah, I love this city.”

“Damn cactus. God fucking damn cactus.”

“I need something—I need something to drink. I need something to eat. My stomach is going to growl at me any second. My mouth and my throat both feel like scorched earth.”

“There he is. Ah! And there she is!  
“Yes, good morning, love. I have something I must tell you.  
“Ooh, muffins! Chocolate! Double chocolate! Oof, rub me and caress me. You know you and I both love it dearly, darling. Said it before, and I will say it again, I really am Eurotrash.  
“You are amused. Amused at me. Are you dressed? Yes! In black. Black, baby. Black makes a hungry Dane grow hungrier.”

“You want to do it before I take you to sound check with me? Hang on, let me finish my muffins and fill my tum first.  
“Eating—eating—eating—I must always eat. I am the spine. I am the maestro. I must eat and fill myself up and fill myself out.”

“Trent's here? Trent's here! I want to feel the leash around my neck again. Jeg er en beskidt lille dreng, der er klar til at give dig din udfylde i morges.”

“I want to give you a light spanking for fattening me up. A light brush of the ass cheeks and a little tickle with my fingers right on that curved skin.  
“I will come down upon you, scorched earth, min sexet pige. I know you want it. I know you know I want it.  
“Chocolate. Chocolate. Tickle me. Rub my butt and then spank it. I have got all of this weight and you know it's making my butt look glorious among other things. Yeah, girl, that's good. Yeah, girl, that's good! Ja pige, det er godt! Where are you going? Oh, shit, I have something to tell you! Damn.”

“Hang on, is this thing hand made? This thing is hand made! She made this at home for me! I can taste her little kick of spice in there. Fresh as pandekager.  
“Oh, talk about a wet dream. Mia and Marcia making me pandekager. I must ask her that when she comes back to the room!”

“Feed my belly. Fill him up. Oh—”

“I am not only a dirty little boy but I am now officially a man of pleasure. Yeah, baby. Pleasure me. Please please me.  
“Right there on my nipples, mamacita. Ha, see what I did there! Bah! Ah ha ha ha!  
“Remember when I said 'bløde' sounds like blow me?”

“All down my chest and my belly—kiss my belly—keep kissing me—ooh, mama, that feels so good. Where's that leather bondage suit you got me? Not that I want to put it on, but—oh, butterfly kisses on my belly! So sweet and lovely. And tickling. Tickle me, skat. Kild mig, skat. Isn't it sexy, darling? Lo, og se, jeg begynder at se mig selv som sexet. Dansk er trods alt erotisk. I am hot. I am so hot. This is why I am so hot. So hot!  
“Is there a scale in here?  
“There is!”

“Oh. Oh, boy. That's a doozy. I am really beginning to get kind of a pot now, too. And I am seeing it starting to come in on myself there in the mirror. I better work my ass off tomorrow night. Don't want to be too greedy of a little boy now. Work my fat ass off.  
“GAH! Oh, hi. I was not expecting that right there on my butt. All the flesh on my butt just moves about like thick gelatin.  
“Ah, yes! Alas, I can work my ass off in here. Work my fat ass off in here. Come here, you dirty little girl—  
“Right on the floor. Lige på gulvet!  
“Play my ass like a pair of bongos, honey pie. You know you want to lest I give you the spanking and—rob—you of your hand.  
“I am a soft boy. My hair, my skin, my everything is soft. And yet, here I am, leading you along. I know you want me.”

“Only.”

“Yes—yes—yes! I like it when you tug on my hair a bit. Especially when we were in the shower. Oh my fucking God—you wanna do that again?  
“I am lush to you. Your fingers on my love handles and all around my waist. A chubby little boy for all of your touches and your kisses. My mouth is hungry for your kisses. You know how pleasing that is to the both of us? Oh, baby—  
“I see you now and I just want to listen to the deepest crevices of your body. It is my temple. You are my temple. Your cunt is the entrance to the temple that is your body.  
“I am yours. I am yours for the taking. Wait, come back here! Come back to me!”

“What are you doing?  
“Oh, you are spreading eagle I see!  
“Okay, I know what you want now. I totally see—hang on, let me drink some water and then we shall go about our merry way.”

“Only.”

“Oh, FUCK! That feels so good. I am a thirsty boy.  
“Okay. Now—let the games begin and hit the lights!”

“Fuck my fist, darling. Fuck it. Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! FUCK! IT!”

“Here I come, baby—oh ho! Now I am on top! I have your ladies now.  
“Are you grabbing my fat? You are! Take a hold of that little bump on my waist like you would pinch off a piece of fudge. Oh, ja, I am on my way to pinching an inch now. And that's—weirdly nicer than a mere belly rub, and you know for a damn fact how I feel about those. Please me and please yourself. Have at it. Go on, go on, massage me and play with it! It's like playing with pandekager dough!  
“What are you—  
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, oooooooooooh, that little kiss right there under my belly button—mmmmmmmm. I don't know how you did that but—you have no idea how good it feels. Oh God. That spot and my neck are officially my kryptonite and you know how to throw it onto me like cold fucking water.  
“Allow me to gyrate. Allow me to move about!  
“Yeah—ja—ja—ja! I've got you! Jeg har dig! Jeg har dig nu!  
“I feel that hardness between you and me. And yet, here I am. Grinding on your pussy like a cat on a scratching post.  
“Wait, that was bad. Or was it? Eh, whatever, who cares. I am here right now.  
“Jeg ved du vil have mig.”

“Throw cold water on me!”

“Jeg vil squash dig med min krop. Squash dig som et insekt. Har mine lår på begge sider af dig, ligesom de er lige nu og brug mine knæ til at læne sig frem og squash dig som et beskidt lille insekt.  
“If my nipples don't tickle yours, I am so getting that piercing!  
“My belly is caressing yours and det er som at glide over fløde og smør. Taler du om fløde og smør, har du flere af disse kager på hånden? Jeg vil gerne spise en af dem som jeg er her med dig på sengen, skat. Jeg fik lige en ide: spis mens du er involveret i hård kærlighed. Oh, ja.”

“Alright, now, I am underneath you. Tickle me like how you were tickling me before on the floor.  
“Hvordan ser jeg ud? Med mit hår spredt ud fra mit hoved og mit bryst hæver som jeg ser dig forberede til at tage en tur?  
“Kys mig. Kys mig igen! Kys mig! Du ved jeg elsker kys. Du ved jeg elsker kys, især lige på min mave. Min mave er så blød og mine knogler er hårde.  
“Oh—oh, ooh—mmm—mmmm—kisses—kys—kys—kys—”  
“Oh, det er det. Det er det! Det! Er! Det! Det er det lige der! Det er det lige her på min hofte! Ooh, ja—ja! Gud, det kildes! Det kildes. Det kildes, men det føles så forunderligt godt! Ah! OH!  
“Hvad laver du? Hvad laver du og forsøger at få mig til at komme to gange? Du er! DU ER! Du er forsøger at få mig til at komme to gange!  
“Nu, hvad nu hvis jeg forsøger at få dig til at komme to gange? Ja? Ja!  
“Kan du lide det? Når jeg går sådan?  
“Du kommer to gange om du kan lide det eller ej, skat.  
“En—ja! Ja! Ja!  
“At spise alt den mad har sine fordele, du ved. Du ved, mere end bare at få mig til at se godt og sundt ud.  
“Smør mig i chokolade og gør mig din, min kærlighed. Jeg vil hjælpe dig med at slikke det hele, hvis du spiser for meget.  
“Er du der, min skat? Oh—Oh—OH! EN! TO! TRE! OOF!  
“Tænk bare på, om jeg var helt bultende, da alt det skete. Åh, helvede, de mange orgasmer vi kunne opleve. Åh, min. Åh, mig, åh, min.”

“If that's James or one of the dudes from Soundgarden, I am going to be pissed. Not because it's them but because I just—I just—ah, fuck it, I don't know what I want.  
“It's Kirk!  
“Oh, you know—having a little rumpus, if you know what I mean.  
“He wants to take us where?  
“Badass!  
“Since we are going out again, I'm putting on that button down shirt I wore to the baking show. It fits me but—you know. It's a little snug on my gut. Two buttons on the middle poking just a little bit further out from the other ones and the shirt tail is poking out. I will wear those snug jeans you like, too. The ones that hug my thighs and my hips and make me look a little bit fuller and more sensual than normal. I'll wear my black boots to make my legs stand out more for you.  
“Here and back for Marcia and Sonia? Okay. I shall be waiting right here for you, darling, like a good boy. I might be playing 'Rumble' by Link Wray for you on the jukebox downstairs and I might be eating chocolate, but otherwise—I shall be right here with my stomach empty and my body ready. But then again, I am still skin and bones: I must eat a little bit. I might be downstairs, but I will be the good boy for you, waiting with a big fat plate of pasta and all the sauce. I shall be the good boy for you, the one you have always dreamed about seducing you and beckoning you with tongue and tummy kisses in Danish.”

“Oh. Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit! I have something to tell you. I have something to tell you! Wait up! Wait up!  
“The elevator doors are closing!  
“FOCK!”


	92. Chapter 92

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “My loving father, give me no pain.  
> Taste of eucalyptus dances and shakes.  
> Mother love bone...mama, papa talkin’ to me,  
> Love breeds like rabbits, i'm gonna set you free now.”  
> -”Capricorn Sister”, Mother Love Bone

Lars had taken a seat on the bed with a cup of coffee in one hand and a little bowl of strawberries accompanied with a light dusting of powdered sugar over the top. He crossed his left leg over his right as he leaned his back against the head board of the bed; he picked up the first strawberry on top, succulent and with a few grains of sugar dotted upon one side. He took a nibble on the bottom tip at first, and then engulfed the flesh of the fruit from under the stem inside of his whole entire mouth, and then placed the stem on the bedspread next to his left hip. While he digested the berry, he lay his free hand on his soft belly, hugged by the buttons and cozy fabric of his shirt. All of the sweetness, all of the softness, and all of the love residing inside of his flesh, only made sweeter by the gentle movement of his hand.  
As he swallowed down the berry, he glanced down at his body, still fit and well composed, but richer, much fuller, and more alluring than he could ever ask for. He glanced down at the big strawberries laying right next to him—full and plump, and ripe, and shapely, just like him—and almost wanted to be alone for himself and bask in his own beauty. He had the perfect body now, but he knew he had to share it with her.  
He was about to take another bite of strawberry when he heard a knock on the door; he stuck the whole fruit into his mouth and bit down on the stem before he picked up the bowl and set it down on the nightstand next to his coffee mug. He climbed off of the bed, tossed his hair back from his shoulder, and padded to the front door. He could feel the fat on his waist and hips hugging him with each and every step, and then he ran his fingers through his bangs before he opened the door.  
Mia stood right there before him wearing a heathered gray Mother Love Bone shirt and a pair of ragged looking dark blue jeans which cradled her hips.  
“There's my baby!” she declared, pressing a hand to his chest before giving him a kiss hello.  
“Oh, my, wearing hip huggers, I see!” he noted before the touch of her lips cut him off. She ran her fingers down the front of his chest to his belly and then gave him a light rub.  
“Come on, big boy—Kirk, Marcia, and Sonia are waiting for us downstairs.”  
“Alright! Can I bring my strawberries?”  
“Your strawberries?”  
“Yeah, on the table.”  
“Eh, just put 'em in the fridge. The maids won't get them.”  
Lars doubled back to slip the bowl of sugar coated strawberries into the miniature refrigerator tucked over in the corner of the room. He then picked up his coffee and his room key, the latter of which he stuffed into his pocket, and headed out with Mia to the bottom lobby of the hotel, where they met up Kirk, Marcia, and Sonia, all of whom wore black shirts; Kirk had tousled up his hair and wore his bangs right down in his face, while Marcia had tied her hair up in a tight bun atop her head. They both had on jeans and Chuck Taylors, while Sonia wore a black miniskirt and black and red slip ons. Both girls stood on either side of him and, upon coming down from the stairs, Lars noticed Kirk's hands tucked into either of their back pockets so he could touch both of their butts at the same time.  
“Are we ready to go see the Love Bone?” he asked the two of them, tossing his hair back from his face.  
“We are,” Lars answered as he felt Mia squeeze the soft flesh right over his right hip; she slid her hand down to his butt for another gentle squeeze. He nibbled on his bottom lip at the feel of her fingers giving him a bit of love, before the show of what Kirk referred to as “love rock.”  
The five of them stepped out to Mia's car parked in one of the front spots right outside of the front door of the hotel; Lars climbed into the passenger seat while Kirk, Marcia, and Sonia took the rear seats behind them. He thought of reclining back to show Mia his body like a dog warming up for a belly rub, but decided not to given they had company with them.  
“Okay, so where is the venue again?” she asked the three of them in the back seat once she started up the car.  
“Just right up the street here,” said Marcia, “go to the driveway here and hang a right.”  
They rolled out of the spot right as a light spring drizzle started to fall upon the windshield. They turned right onto Market Street and began heading to wherever this venue was located. Lars flicked his hair back from his face and then he took a sip of his coffee as he peered out the window at the low brick buildings lining the streets of the neighborhood of Ballard, just due northwest of the heart of downtown Seattle. He loved this city, about as much as he loved Copenhagen and San Francisco, that is until they halted at an intersection amidst a small network of nondescript restaurants and shops.  
“Lars and you ladies see that little ramshackle looking place to your left?” Lars turned his head at Kirk pointing out the driver's side window at the low black wooden building with a darkened glass front window gaping out at them like a black hole. “Right next to the tattoo parlor?”  
“Yeah,” said Mia.  
“Ben from Soundgarden wants to make it into like a nightclub or a bar some day.”  
“That dumpy little place?” Sonia almost laughed at that.  
“Yeah. I hope he does it.”  
“Sandra says she's looking to come here to Ballard for another division of Smell the Magic,” Mia pointed out as she pulled forward. “I'm sure she and Ben can breathe a whole new life into it.”  
Butterflies swirled about in Lars' stomach at the sound of that. It was official: Smell the Magic coming to Seattle! Perhaps Mia can transfer up here and they can live together in a little loft somewhere near the water, and preferably here in this neighborhood as they passed by the Nordic Heritage Museum. He raised his eyebrows at that and then he felt his heart soar inside of his chest.  
“I am home,” he said to himself as he took another large drink of coffee. Soon, they approached the venue: a wooden stage surrounded by a series of big black protective tarps and massive speakers, and overlooked the water; the temporary venue itself was separated from the rest of the neighborhood by a chain link fence. The drizzle had stopped as the five of them climbed out of the car and ambled around the fence to underneath the tarps to find several people had already arrived.  
“So what are they called again?” Marcia asked Kirk.  
“Same name as Mia's shirt,” he gestured at Mia's chest. “Mother Love Bone. It's the singer of Malfunkshun, two guys from Green River, and two other guys. I'm guessing they're going to try and be the big band of Seattle, given the guy—well, you and Lars have seen him.”  
“Oh yeah,” Lars joined in, giving his hair another toss back from his face and taking another sip of his coffee. “Real big personality like Mick Jagger or Freddie Mercury.”  
“And there's Kurt!” Sonia declared, pointing to the far side of the temporary room at Kurt, standing near the edge of the stage with his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets and a piece of his blond hair covering one side of his face.  
“Kurt!” Sonia called out again; he turned his head at the sound of someone calling his name and then his face lit up at the sight of them.  
“Oh, hey!” he mouthed and then he hurried towards them, his plaid flannel shirt streaming behind him and revealing his black under shirt and black leather belt. Lars nibbled on his bottom lip as he approached them.  
Kurt ran a hand over his long hair and showed them a dimpled smile once he stopped before them.  
“I was wondering when you guys would show up,” he confessed. “The show doesn't start for at least another couple of hours. Wanna come backstage with me and meet everybody?”  
“I don't see why not,” said Mia with a shrug, putting her arm around Lars' lower back to hold him by the hip: her touch once more relaxed him. He hoped they wouldn't see Ashley here as they followed Kurt around the speakers to the little nook behind the stage and within mere yards of the water. There stood a series of dumpy looking couches with faded upholstery underneath a dark blue tarp to protect them from the edge of the pier. On the couch closest to them was the singer of Malfunkshun, now the frontman of Mother Love Bone, with his long blond disheveled hair and a streak of glitter running down upon one side of his head, wearing a shiny white coat with a belt, next to whom Lars believed was his girlfriend: a young woman with wavy black hair and a narrow oval shaped face with olive skin, like a slender, taller looking version of Mia. Next to them stood two guys, the one on the left with a puffy blue and white striped hat atop his fluffy hair and a bright fiery red shirt, and the one on the right with fair features and long dishwater blond hair which began to outgrow its hairspray tease: both men held glasses of some kind of bright red liquid in their hands. Lars thought they were a glam band at first, but then Chris emerged from the far side of the room with his hair loose about his head and a black leather jacket around his body, even though the drizzle had stopped and the air around them hung crisp, but not cold.  
“Oh, hey, they're here,” he stated aloud, and the other four people turned to Kurt, who beamed bright at them, the dimple in his chin prominent and adorable.  
“Andy, Xana, Jeff, Stone—this is Lars and Kirk from the mighty Metallica,” he introduced them.  
“With their girls, too, we see,” Andy, the frontman, added with a playful tone to his voice.  
Lars had zoned out at some point, given his mind was fixated upon Ashley cheating on James with Kurt, and he was sitting right across from him with Chris on the couch next to him and Mia. He thought back to that evening when they received the news, and he began to question it soon thereafter. All he could do right then was eat up the tiny sandwiches and the chips on the table behind Andy and Xana. He had asked Xana if there was tea and she thought about it for a moment.  
“Wait right here,” she told him, holding up a finger and she darted behind the tarps. He returned to his seat on the couch next to Mia with a pair of hors d'oeuvres in either hand. Stone, the guy on the right, filled up his glass with the same red liquid in the pitcher upon the table. Lars kept his gaze fixed upon his hands and all of the bracelets and trinkets wrapped around his wrists: pieces of his streaky dishwater blond hair rested upon his shoulders, and the side profile of his face reminded Lars of a half moon. He thought of glitzing up himself at some point, especially if he wanted to continue looking good for Mia. He fell out of his daze for a moment as he watched Kirk start speaking to Stone about using wah pedals and other effects.  
Lars turned his attention to Chris lighting up a joint right across from them and took a huff: a plume of smoke emerged from his lips, which was then followed by a cough and the rank smell of the burning marijuana. He passed it to Kurt, who then took a huff for himself.  
“Our friendly neighborhood chatterbox has been awfully quiet right now,” Marcia noted on the other side of Lars.  
“That's what happens when he eats a lot,” Mia pointed out to her in a low voice before she took a sip of the same red liquid, and Lars caught a whiff of cranberries right at that moment. Xana emerged from behind the tarps with a paper cup with a lid in one hand.  
“Here, Lars,” she offered him the cup, and he could smell the tea on the inside of the lid.  
“Oh, thank you!”  
“I had to drive all the way down to Pike Place to get it, and the only one I could find right offhand was black tea.”  
“Oh, no, that's perfect—thank you.” Lars blew into the slit in the lid before taking a sip. He flashed back on when Mia was hit in the head at Pike Place and hoped nothing like that would happen today.  
“Also, the crowd's getting of considerable size, babe,” Xana told Andy right as he took out a pair of purple lensed glasses with glossy white horned rims from the pocket of his coat; he breathed on the lenses and cleaned them with the bottom hem of his black shirt.  
“Are Greg and Bruce here?” he wondered aloud.  
“They are, yes.”  
“Okay.”  
He slipped on the glasses and gestured for everyone to file out of the backstage area. Lars climbed to his feet and clasped a hand onto Mia's shoulder; he could still smell the burning weed behind him from Chris and Kurt's shared joint as they stepped out from behind the large speakers and into the very front of the crowd. Lars kept one hand on the lid of his tea and one arm around Mia's lower back, the latter of which she did the same for him. Her fingers squeezed his butt once again and his toes curled inside of his boots; meanwhile, Chris and Kurt dispersed out to the crowd to their right.  
Through the cracks of the tarps, the sun had begun to hang low over the Olympic Peninsula, thus giving the sky over Seattle a rich royal blue color. Andy took to the stage with his long blond hair streaming behind his head and the glitter in his hair glimmering in the late afternoon sun. He gripped onto the microphone stand, while the drummer and the guitarist took their places, and Jeff picked up a bright purple bass guitar, and Stone took a shabby wooden electric guitar with a tiny amplifier.  
“Hello, Seattle! And the world!” Andy bellowed into the microphone, the purple lenses of his glasses shiny bright like the sun against Lars' eyes. “We are Mother Love Bone! Love rock awaits you people!”  
And they commenced playing. Lars almost dropped his tea at the jolt of the kick drum, the rumble of Jeff's bass, and the screech of the other guitarist's guitar. Andy's voice was crisp and bold, so much that it carried throughout the tarp and towards the street behind all of them. Their sound held tight and roared with immense, brilliant energy: it made him think of Metallica playing in a tiny club in downtown Los Angeles, except they utilized more bright colors and rainbows compared to their dark leather and cold stillness. But there was simply no way this small stage could handle their energy. He watched them, as if hypnotized, and thought telling James about it in a hope that he could take note for promotion of their next album.  
He thought about telling Mia but he knew no sound could travel very far given the noise and the closeness of the speakers.  
He turned to her and the cathartic expression upon her face.  
And then he felt something hit him in the head right as the other guitarist began to play a solo.  
Lars let go of Mia's hip and turned to see an older man, his face twisted with rage, and brandishing a cane at them. He turned his head again to see Mia ducking down. He had a cup of black tea in his hand, one that Xana had bought just for him. But it was the only thing standing between him and sustaining another blow to the head.  
Lars tossed the hot tea into the man's face and he yelped out. He dropped the cup onto the ground and grasped onto Mia's hand. He spotted Dale lingering near the speaker before them and with a look of alarm upon his face.  
“DALE!” Lars shrieked over Andy's singing and the harsh distortion of the guitars. Dale beckoned for them to follow him backstage, and then he guided them back to the couches, where Xana was picking some of the refreshments. She gasped at the sight of Lars and Mia there before her.  
“What happened? Is everything okay?” she demanded, rounding the side of the couch to see them.  
“Some crazy old twat just hit Lars right in the head! Deliberately!” Dale declared.  
“For no reason, too!” Lars exclaimed, clasping a hand to the crown of his head, which throbbed with pain. “And I lost my tea.”  
“Well, it was either that or get knocked out cold,” Xana pointed out, gesturing for them to take a seat on the couch.  
“No, no, no, no, it's alright,” he assured her, waving his hands before his face. “I'm not bleeding or anything.”  
“Okay, well, I'll be right here, though. And Dale will keep an eye out for you guys. Punks know how to protect you.”  
“The hell we do—come on—”  
He led them out of the backstage and into the crowd again. The man was nowhere to be seen, but Kirk, Marcia, and Sonia had saved their spot near the front as the crowd erupted into loud cheers and a wave of applause.  
Lars wanted to forget about the incident as Mother Love Bone engaged in a number with the word “Capricorn” utilized at one point. Capricorn! The day after Christmas! He knew how to recover and roll forth, and it was this very song that made him realize this. Soon the pain disappeared, but after two more songs, Mia had a look upon her face as if she was worried about something. Lars dared not ask her given the noise level in the venue, but once Andy said it would be the last song, she had ducked out from behind him. He turned his head to see Kirk preparing to mosh next to him. He wondered if she was merely finding a bathroom, so he enjoyed himself to the very end, right as Jeff took off his bass and flashed the horns at him and Kirk.  
Lars returned the favor and then he turned around him to the crowd. Mia was nowhere to be seen and she had driven them there.  
“Where's Mia?” Marcia asked him, her voice sounded thousands of miles away from the whirring in Lars' ears.  
“I don't know!” His own voice sounded far away; Dale had disappeared, too. The four of them returned to the backstage area, where Andy flopped down on the couch; Jeff took off his hat to toss his hair back from his face while Stone removed his bracelets. Xana clapped her hands before she leaned down to give Andy a kiss.  
“Great show! Great show!” he exclaimed once she lifted her head.  
“Have you guys seen Mia?” Sonia asked them.  
“Mia? No,” replied Xana. “After she and Lars came back here, I just tended to this area here.”  
“I saw Kurt and Chris tackling a guy behind Lars, but that was it,” Jeff confessed, putting his hat back on his head. “There was too much going on onstage and in the crowd that none of us saw anything.”  
Lars' heart sank. It was Pike Place all over again.  
He padded his hands onto his jeans pockets. Something else didn't feel right.  
“Where's my key?” he asked aloud, his voice taking all of them aback.  
“Your key?” Kirk echoed.  
“Yeah, my room key—” He stopped. He remembered Mia had her hand on his butt and around his pockets. Perhaps she took it and went back to the room?  
“Well, the hotel's not very far, anyways,” Marcia pointed out, “you can just get yourself another one when we go back.”  
“I don't really feel like walking, though,” he confessed.  
“I can drive you back real quick,” Xana offered with a shrug and a toss of her long black hair.  
“I'll see if Mia's there, too,” he added.  
“You all wait right here, we'll be right back—or I will. Who knows. We'll be back.”  
Lars and Xana ducked out of the backstage area to the chain link and to the tiny black car with a crooked antenna next to the lid of the trunk; he spotted a Kate Bush sticker in the rear window that made him think of his Deep Purple sticker. He climbed into the cozy off white seat next to her and she took the driver's seat; before they pulled back out to the street, Lars noticed Mia's car was gone.  
Xana drove him back down Market Street to the tiny two story hotel on the corner, and he had a cold sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach at the sight he saw before the lobby door.  
“That's her car,” he pointed out.  
“That's her car?”  
“Yeah.”  
She bounded into the driveway and stopped right before the front door; he was about to climb out while the car was still in motion when she gripped onto him and stopped him.  
“You want me to wait here for you?” she suggested.  
“I'm going to get a new key and see if she's alright,” he told her, “so—we will meet up with you back there.”  
“Oh, okay. We'll all have dinner together!”  
“Ooh, yes! You—You can let go of my arm now.”  
Lars climbed out of the car and rounded the hood to the front door right as Xana pulled away. He bypassed the front desk and returned upstairs. The hallway hung silent, except for the soft whimpering emerging from behind the door of his room.  
“Mia?” he called through the panel of the door. He could hear her crying.  
“Mia?” he called out again, knocking on the panel. He then heard the soft click of the door unlocking and then pulling open, but he never saw her face. He entered the room right as she hid into the bathroom.  
“Mia? Mia, darling?” he called after her in a gentle voice. She closed the door behind her and wept even more. Lars felt his heart sink even more.  
“Mia?” He stood before the door while listening to her weep. “Mia, what's wrong?”  
She cried even more and all he could do was stare at the line of yellow light streaming out from underneath the door and onto the toes of his boots, which he could still see despite his belly and his shirt tail poking out a bit.  
“Mia?” The very sound of her crying brought a break to his voice. He then bowed his head and fetched up a sigh.  
“Mia—my love. Is there something you want to tell me?”  
She sniffled, which was followed up with silence. Unsettling silence; the butterflies returned to his stomach again, but not for a good reason. He opened his eyes as he lifted his head, and stared at the door panel before him.  
“Mia?” he called out again, this time in an even smaller voice. “Are you alright?”  
“There is something I need to tell you,” she confessed, her voice echoing off of the walls of the bathroom.  
“Well—if you want to say it, just tell me. Whatever it is that is eating at you cannot be that huge. And if it is, I would understand.”  
“Actually, it is huge. It's enormous, actually.”  
“Well—” He slipped his hands into his pockets as he leaned his shoulder against the door frame. “—come on out. I don't really want to shout through the door.” There was more silence, and then, with a sniffle and a cough, she unlocked the door and opened it. She gazed on at him with puffy red eyes and stains of tears upon her face. She had balled a tissue in her hand, and dabbed her eyes with it.  
“Okay,” she sighed, as she turned off the light. And they ambled back to the edge of the bed.


	93. Chapter 93

“So what on Earth is the matter? It's okay. It's okay. Take your time.”  
Lars had taken his seat next to her on the foot of the bed with his thighs spread open part of the way and his feet holding up flat on the floor; he lay a hand on her right knee and let his fingers caress the inside of her thigh. Mia sniffled and dabbed her eyes with the wadded tissue in her hand again and again. She kept crying, even with his hand there. He gazed on at her with intention as she glanced down at his waist, so full and round and beginning to show a spill over of the band of his jeans. She sniffled as she glanced up at him with tears brimming her eyes; he showed her a smile so as to soothe things over.  
“It's just—that guy there,” she squeaked out as a tear streamed down from her eye and over her face.  
“The guy who hit me in the head?” he asked her in a gentle voice. She sniffled again as she nodded at him.  
“Yes—it—it terrified me.”  
“And so you took the key right out of my pocket when I paid no attention and you came back here,” he followed along. “You couldn't tell me because it was so loud.”  
She sniffled once more and added another nod of her head. Lars felt his bottom trembling as he leaned towards her with his arms open; he closed his eyes as he rested his chin on her shoulder. He could feel her hands caressing his lower back and sliding onto his love handles.  
“Touch me,” she whispered, and he ran his fingers through her dark hair and onto the upper part of her back as it shuddered and quaked with her struggling to catch her breath. He made sure his body cradled her and loved her in return.  
“Touch me,” he whispered back to her; her fingers slithered under the fabric of his shirt to give his flesh a loving squeeze. “Touch me—feel me—love me—”  
Lars pulled back to push the hair out of her eyes and then follow it up with a kiss upon her lips: flecks of tears fell upon his cheek bones but he could not care less at that point.  
“Are you growing a beard?” she asked him, touching the seedlings of dark hair his chin and his jaw.  
“I am.” He stared into her eyes with a sweet smile upon his face; he eyed the old scar on her forehead for a second and then returned his gaze to her.  
“I know what will lift your spirits,” he said, letting go of her and standing to his feet. He pressed his back against the wall and crossed his right leg over his left to emphasize his hips. He tossed his hair back with a flick of his head to give attention to his neck, and then he slid the backs of his hands behind the dip in his back, and he poked out the middle of his body. The buttons hugging against his belly pressed even more against his flesh to make the full shape of his body even fuller and more alluring for her. She kept her gaze fixed on his body, the body she helped make with him.  
“Oh—” she breathed out at the sight of him, “—beautiful boy. Beautiful—beautiful boy.”  
He watched her lick her lips as she dropped her gaze from his chest to his belly and then to his hips and his thighs.  
“—sexy boy—” She then lifted her gaze back to his chest, and the skin exposed by an undone button.  
“—baby—” Her voice as light and crisp as the winds outside. “—baby, open up your shirt.”  
Lars lifted his hands out from behind his lower back to unfasten the buttons on his shirt. Once he reached his shirt tail, he returned his hands to his lower back to emphasize his body again. Her chest began to heave and each and every breath was accompanied with a light aroused whimper.  
“Oh—” She eyed his waist, thick and slightly round from that little roll there, accentuated by the band of his jeans. Everything was much fuller and softer.  
“Oh my God, you're so fucking sexy—”  
She scrambled to her feet and wrapped her arms around his waist, and brought her lips to his mouth. She groaned inside of her throat as she upped the ante on the kiss: her tongue caressed along the edges of his teeth. He closed his eyes as she lay her hands on his belly for a gentle rub, even though he hadn't eaten in over an hour. Her fingers stroked over his thick flesh while he took his hands out to hold onto her butt.  
She took her tongue out of his mouth to gaze into his face.  
“I don't want to lose you,” she whispered.  
“I will not leave,” he whispered back to her as tears brimmed her eyes once more. She kissed his neck to feel the sprouting hair on his skin against her lips: the feel of her there made his toes curl inside of his boots and his knees knit together. He let out a pleasured gasp and his tongue shot out of his mouth; she moved her mouth off of his neck to look at him right into his eyes again. He slipped his fingers into her hair with his lips parted and his body feeling as soft and smooth as silk.  
“My soft boy,” she whispered into his face, “my soft, sweet boy.”  
“Xana offered to—take us out for dinner,” he recalled in a husky voice. She sighed and then she brought her hands to his face for another kiss on the lips.  
“I'm going to feed you and get your tummy all nice and full—absolutely full to the brim—” She gasped and kept her parted lips close to his mouth. “—and then I will be gentle. So gentle and kind. Gentle as a feather—as I can ever possibly get, as I make the sweetest and beautiful of love to you and your beautiful body.”  
“And I will return the favor to you, skat,” he told her in a near whisper, stroking the side of her face, stained with tears. “Let's get you cleaned up.”  
He led her into the bathroom, where he flicked on the light and reached for the nearest wash cloth, and wet it under the faucet. Careful and gentle himself, he stroked the cloth over her face, right underneath her eyes. He wet the cloth again and rubbed the bar of soap on the side facing her, and then wet it again. He cleaned off the tear stains from her face, and then he rinsed her off before he wrung out the cloth and hung it up on the towel rung behind him.  
“Come on—let's feed each other tastiness and stuff me silly,” he beckoned her, closing his eyes part of the way for that hooded, seductive look, and his hands moved slow and steady up the button of his shirt right then.  
They filed out of the bathroom together, and Mia went to pick up her purse and the room key off of the table, and they returned outside right as the sun dipped behind the Olympic Peninsula. He climbed into the passenger seat next to her and they returned to the venue, which was now deserted except for Andy and Xana awaiting them at the side of the stage, where they had gone into the backstage area before.  
Andy had changed his clothes from that white coat into a regular black leather jacket with zippers on the sleeves, and he had taken off his purple and white glasses and tucked them into the color of his shirt. However, he still had glitter in his hair: it glimmered and shone in the orange and yellow twilight overhead. Jeff and Stone on the other hand had returned home already.  
“Where's Kirk and the girls?” asked Mia as they approached within earshot.  
“Right behind you,” replied Xana, nodding behind them, and the two of them turned to see Kirk, Marcia, and Sonia, still dressed given Mia had taken the car with her back to the hotel. “So is everything okay with you?”  
“Yeah, I just got kind of spooked from the guy in the crowd,” Mia replied in a single breath.  
“Oh, wow,” Andy remarked with a faint Southern twang to his voice, “God, I can't believe I didn't see that.”  
“So where we headed to again?” asked Kirk, changing the subject.  
“Wherever we wanna go,” answered Andy with a grin. “Xana suggested it after all.”  
“We can go to Mama's, or one of the places down in Pike Place, or we can go to Dick's—”  
“We can go to Dick's?” Lars raised his eyebrows, and Mia giggled at the expression on his face.  
“We can go to Dick's for cheese burgers and paradise,” Xana elaborated with a twinkle in her eye.  
“Let's go to Mama's—I've been wanting rice and beans all day,” said Sonia.  
“Alright—come on, babe.” Xana put her hand around Andy's upper arm. Lars, meanwhile, flashed Mia a smirk. Another round of Mexican food right into his belly, and much to Mia's pleasure at that, and Xana and Andy were both contributing, so he could eat as much as he wanted there.  
Andy and Xana climbed into her car while Kirk, Marcia, and Sonia volunteered to ride with them, leaving Lars and Mia with her car to themselves. Once she started up the car, she turned to him with a warm look upon her face.  
“Given we're in Ballard, also known as little Scandinavia, and I spotted a little Swedish bakery on the way here…” she began, fluttering her eyelashes.  
“You're not suggesting—”  
“After dinner, big boy,” she whispered, leaning over the center console to kiss the five o'clock shadow on his face. She pulled out of the space and followed Andy and Xana all the way down to Mama's for dinner and a round of margaritas. Given it was a Thursday night, the room stood empty except for the bartenders and one waitress.  
The two of them once again sat at the bar and shared roasted chicken flautas with sour cream, and a large helping of rice and refried beans. Lars downed the margarita and asked for another, but he did not finish it. He was too intent on the food right before him, filling up his stomach and making his belly feel even softer and fuller: at one point, he leaned back in his chair to show Mia the buttons on his shirt, pressed snug against his body. She fluttered her eyelashes at him again as she dipped her spoon into the beans and held it towards his mouth. As she stuck the beans right into his mouth, he eyed the scar on her forehead and thought about the incident in Pike Place Market. It was such a strange shape, like the foot of a cane. He wondered if the man in the audience was the same man who hit Mia in the head, knocking her out cold that time. But he never saw the foot of the man's cane from the adrenaline, and hence he couldn't make that conclusion.  
He took another sip of margarita and a wave of drowsiness swept over him. He felt so good and so warm on the inside, and he never wanted the feeling to end, even though Mia fed him the last of the flauta platter. He rested his elbow on the top of his chair, and then rested the side of his head on the backs of his knuckles, and a more than satisfied smile crossed his face. The only thing that would have made this whole evening more enjoyable was if James and Dave joined them at one of the tables behind them.  
“Getting full?” she asked him in a kind tone.  
“Oh, darling, I am more than full,” he replied in a husky voice, low enough so Kirk, Marcia, Sonia, Andy, and Xana would not eavesdrop upon them. “I am completely and totally stuffed.”  
She giggled at him and his closed eyes.  
Mia might as well have carried him out to the car; he could hardly keep his eyes open as she drove back up to Ballard and to the Swedish bakery she had talked about beforehand. He stayed reclined in the passenger seat as she stepped into the bakery for a round of pandekager and princess cakes. Pandekager! Perhaps that could be breakfast as well.  
They returned to the hotel room and, once she had unlocked the door and they stepped back inside, he collapsed on his side on the bed. He must have dozed off at one point, because he awoke to a pillow under his head and her laying next to him, on her side as well, and in a lacy teddy over her body and a princess cake in hand.  
“Darling,” his voice broke and she showed him a smile, albeit a rather nervous one. He cleared his throat. “How long have I been asleep?”  
“Not even ten minutes,” she answered. “All that heavy food and those margaritas—just put you right to sleep.”  
She sighed through her nose and showed him the princess cake. He nibbled on his bottom lip at the sight of it as she held it to his mouth. He opened his mouth and took a nibble of the marzipan on the side. He swore a button would fly off as he took another nibble of the marzipan and the underlying cake. He could feel his belly getting even fuller as he rolled onto his back: the buttons on his shirt were even more snug on his flesh at that point.  
“Lars—” she started in a soft voice, and then she cleared her throat. He swallowed the cake and parted his lips to let out a soft moan.  
“Lars—given your tummy is all full and you have had a couple of drinks, I need to come clean with you about something.”  
He rolled his head over the pillow to look at her.  
“Do you now?”


	94. Chapter 94

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “And you only sleep when you've lost cause.  
> Well, I still believe that the cause was always me.  
> And if you don't believe I think you should,  
> you make so proud!  
> Still you love to think you have always been this way.”  
> -”Battle-axe”, Deftones (aka one of my absolute favorite Deftones songs)

Lars pushed himself into an upright position right there on the bed next to her: it was difficult from all of the food inside of his stomach, but he managed to do it, and stretched his legs out from his body. He fixed upon the concerned expression on her face and that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach had returned, much stronger that time.  
“Well—whatever it is, it can't be that bad,” he confessed, breathing a bit hard, “—can it?”  
Mia nibbled on her bottom lip and glanced down at the princess cake in her hand. She closed her eyes as she sighed through her nose.  
“Lars,” she started, pursing her lips together; he raised his eyebrows at her. “Lars—I've been having an affair.”  
He felt his knees go weak at the sound of that. His mind went blank and he thought someone had punched him right square in the chest.  
“You—” he said almost without thinking. “You have been—cheating on me?”  
“Not you,” she corrected herself.  
He turned to her with a baffled look on his face.  
“I'm—I'm not following,” he confessed.  
“I have been cheating on my husband with you.”  
He shook his head and squirmed in his seat.  
“…what,” was all he could choke out.  
“Yes. It is true. I was afraid of this, too.”  
“What?!” he raised his voice so quickly that she dropped the princess cake on the bedspread between them.  
“It's true. I have been having an affair with you. You are the other man in my life.”  
Lars closed his eyes and ran his hands over the tops of his thighs. He had no clue what to think right then and thus the words came out of him.  
“Your—Your husband?” he repeated, gaping at her. “You're married!”  
“I was married. Until recently. But yes, remember that ring on my finger when you walked into the bakery on that day?”  
“Yes?”  
“That was a wedding ring. I lied because I found myself attracted to you, with your long beautiful hair, and your green eyes, and your round chubby face, and your accent—your accent is so sexy, my God.”  
“But—you were married,” he pointed out.  
“Yes. Until recently.” She swallowed and shifted her weight on her side of the bed. “Remember Doorknob?”  
“How could I f—” He stopped, and slowly turned his gaze away from her to his feet. And then he realized what she meant by that. He gasped and accompanied it with a grimace and a tightening of the muscles in his throat as if he was about to throw up right there on the floor. But ignoring the full feeling in his stomach, he clambered to his feet to get away from her.  
“Hang on, hang on—you—” he sputtered, the image of the broken window and the broken doorknob at the Bennetts' house flashing through his mind. The worry in their voices. The fear in the air that night. “—you—you are married to DOORKNOB!”  
“Was,” she corrected him again. He knitted his eyebrows together and cocked his head to the side.  
“Wait, what do you mean? I still don't understand!”  
Mia licked her lips as she prepared to tell him the whole thing.  
“After our last trip up here—when we went to the Sub Pop shows over Martin Luther King weekend—I came home to an empty house. He had cleaned out my fridge and taken everything out of the pantry. I couldn't take it anymore, so I called up Ashley and I convinced her to make shrimp for me.”  
“Shrimp?”  
“I am deathly allergic.”  
“But—hang on a second—I am confused. If you are allergic to shrimp, why are you even here with me?”  
“It wasn't real. She crafted shrimp out of marzipan. And then she and Sonia—being the theater students that they are—told Wayne I had died from anaphylactic shock, and—that was what got him out of the house and away from me. Lars, listen to me: he was abusive. He would hit me, beat me, and gaslighted me if I said anything that went against what he said. I kept you a secret and I lied to him about everywhere I went because I feared for our safety. When he broke into Marcia and Sonia's house that night—the night of your birthday, at that, too—that did it for me. Marcia and Sonia are like my sisters, but I needed to protect you from him. That has always been my biggest worry with this affair is he could catch us in the act and do—do terrible things to you. And to me, too. The broken doorknob and door panel at their house was a wake up call for me.”  
Lars thought he was going to faint right there, but he caught himself and clasped a hand to the side of his head.  
“You—You faked your death just so you could be with me?”  
“Yes. And I did a terrible thing, making my friends go through all of that with him and forcing them to lie about it, too. Mike and Liv even know nothing about it. They just thought I broke it off with him and went with you as is. When my parents came over to my house that night? They freaked out because they realized what was going on, and I lied to you about that.”  
“What the f—I—”  
“I understand if you are confused, or just don't know what to say. But know I did it for you. I did it all for you. And the man who took a swing at your head earlier? That was—his father. I recognized him. I don't have a clue how he found us, but that was indeed him. He saw you and tried to take you out with that stupid cane of his.”  
He shook his head. He had no idea if he should be in love with this woman or utterly mortified. She patted her hand on the bedspread to seduce him back to bed.  
“But now that it's over between me and him,” she lowered her voice again, “come back to bed, baby.”  
But that warm, full feeling inside of his stomach had morphed into nausea, and he had already stood to his feet.  
“No,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head in disbelief. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—NO!”  
“'No' what?” Mia lifted herself into an upright position as he staggered back from her. She climbed off of the bed to look at him straight on. Lars backed up towards the miniature refrigerator as if she was contagious.  
“You—You cheated—on that piece of shit—that jackass—with—with—with ME?”  
“Yes. And I faked my death to be with you.”  
“NO!” he raised his voice again.  
“No?”  
“NO! NO! Absolutely NOT!”  
“What is the problem?” she exclaimed, creeping closer to him.  
“The problem? First of all, I nearly got killed back there at the show by his father—or whoever the hell it was. Second—eh. Ehhhh—” He grimaced and waved his hands before his mouth as if he had just eaten something rancid. “—ehhhh, I feel dirty and disgusting. I can't—I can't—”  
“You can't what?”  
He shook his head at her with his parted lips twitching and his stomach in a tight knot.  
“I cannot believe,” he could barely speak, “you would—have the gall to lie to me. How—How could you. How dare you. Of all the people, you lied to me. TO ME!”  
He backed up even more, so much that he lingered right in that tight corner of the room.  
“Yes, I lied because I WANT YOU!” she declared. “I want you all for myself and I lied because I LOVE YOU!”  
His chest heaved. He could feel his knees buckling but he could not find anything behind him to catch his balance. He kept backing up until he reached the far corner of the room; she followed him every step of the way. At one point, he glanced down at the toes of his boots pointed right at her bare feet. She lifted a hand to touch his face but he ducked down.  
“No,” he said in a soft voice. “Don't touch me. No.”  
“No?”  
“No. You know what?”  
“What?”  
He closed his mouth and hunched his shoulders as if he was cold. She reached down to take his hand.  
“Get out,” he commanded, never blinking or raising his voice.  
“What do you mean 'get out'?” she demanded, squeezing his hand even harder, and then he pushed her hand away.  
“Get—out. Get out of my face, get out of my room, get out of my city… and more importantly, get out of my life. We are done.”  
Mia stared at him with a hurt look upon her face, but she nodded her head with a sigh through her nose. She wheeled around and headed into the bathroom to fetch her clothes. To think he had held her in his arms a mere couple of hours beforehand, and she was laying by his side with a little piece of Scandinavia right before him not even a minute before. He swore he had made the right decision even with the tequila inside of him. He never left the corner of the room as she stepped out of the bathroom, changed back into her Mother Love Bone shirt and her jeans, and with her teddy over her arm. The sweet look he had fallen in love with had been replaced with an intense scowl. She slung her purse over her shoulder and padded across the carpet to look at him right in the eye one last time. She loomed right in his face with her mouth within a mere inch from his lips.  
“I saved you,” she said to him in a low voice. “I fed you, I nourished you, I loved you, and I made things more than comfy for you. I fixed you and alleviated you of your loneliness. Know that I love you.”  
“Correction,” he pointed out, “I fixed me. You merely opened my eyes to what I was feeling prior to you showing up. Now—” He could feel the tears coming on as he realized what he had done. “—get out of my sight. I don't need you to see my own beauty.”  
And with that, Mia turned back around without a kiss or another word. She stepped out to the hallway with one final glance back at him, and closed the door behind her. Lars stood there, left all alone in the hotel room with his face turning red and his lips in a full on tremble. The room hung silent now, and it dawned on him that she had left and was not coming back. He eyed the princess cake on the bedspread, the very cake she had gotten for him in the bakery there in Ballard. He had eaten all of that food for her, and she was more than willing to take care of him outside of her marriage. She was that desperate, but she was also that much in love with him.  
And he blew it. He blew it right then and there.  
“Oh—” He could feel his heart sinking in his chest. He felt sick, as if someone punched him, hard, right in the solar plexus. He leaned back against the walls of the corner with his hands clasped to his chest as if catching the blood trickling from the breaks in his heart.  
“Oh, God—fuck. What have I done—what did she do—”  
He slid down the wall and onto the floor. The pain in his chest was almost too much to bear, so much that the tears streamed down from his face. He closed his eyes as he pulled his knees up to his chest and curled up in that corner.  
“Fuck,” he breathed, his voice breaking and trembling. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fanden—fuck him. Fuck me. Fuck my head—and my stomach—”  
He buried his face in his hands and wept for himself and for the girl he loved and ultimately, pushed away.


	95. Chapter 95

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yesterday, I learned that typing “Mia” into the Tumblr search bar will get you an “Everything Okay?” message followed by a slew of eating disorder posts. Her last name, Panadera, has the base word “pan” which means “bread”. So her name is not only a titillating Spanish title “my sweet baker”, but is a window into the subconscious of a soul in recovery, someone who wishes to get away from the life of starvation.  
> Bonus for the All Within My Hands Foundation being all about feeding people.

Lars lifted his head and leaned back against the wall. That feeling in his stomach, that warm cozy feeling now felt like a dead weight inside of him, as if he had just swallowed a heavy rock and he had difficulty digesting it. He wiped his eyes with the side of his palm but that never stopped a series of tears from streaking down his face. He stared at the door in hopes that Mia would return. He wanted her to come back and love him and touch him, but he realized she was long gone at that point.  
Her words echoed throughout his mind. She cheated on her husband with him. He was the other man. He was the other man! That explained how she was such a fantastic lover, but the fact never changed from her having to cheat and risk the lives of her friends just to be with him. Her best friend also cheated on his best friend, and he never brought it up to her.  
The skin on the crown of his head itched: he felt dirty and disgusting, like a used tampon. But he couldn't help but think: she was willing to do all of that just for him, and to please herself at that!  
He ran his fingers through his hair and then he climbed to his feet, and hurried to the bathroom to clean up. He unfastened the buttons on his shirt, and peeled it off, and lay it on the counter next to the sink. He took off his jeans and his underwear and climbed into the shower. The warm water held and cradled him like his mother's arms: he let it pour over his neck and his chest. It poured all over his body and his face, down his arms, down his hips and thighs and his legs towards his feet.  
Careful not to slip on the floor of the tub, he turned around to let the water wash over his hair. How he wanted that softness again, the soft feeling inside of his body, now replaced by nausea and an uncomfortable ache in his chest. He tipped his head back so the water washed over his bangs and his brow: he couldn't be seen with the tears on his face. He lifted his hands to spread the water over the smooth skin on his cheek bones, and on the bridge of his nose, and his cherry lips: the fledgling hair on his chin and over his lip brushed against his fingers.  
To think he had desired on growing a beard just for her pleasure. He had no idea if he would keep it now. The soft pads of his fingers caressed over his face and his neck; he parted his lips and a thought crossed his mind to take a little more than a drink of water from the faucet over his head.  
He thought about Trent and the album he was writing for himself, and wondered if any lyrics he wrote down for it, if any at that point, would bring him peace as well.  
He slid his fingers down the sides of his neck onto his chest and his belly.  
Oh, his belly. Once flat, almost concave at one point, now with that gentle round curve from the bottom of his chest all the way down towards his hips. Soft and sweetly plump and sensual, a beautiful little tummy poking out from the middle of his body. He ran his hands over the cute pillowy little handles over his hips, called love handles for a good reason. He was right on the point of what the both of them wanted.  
And she had left. She had left and wasn't there to show it love with her hands or her lips.  
He crossed his arms in an “X” shape over his chest, and then he looked down at his body, now drenched in the warm water.  
“What have I done,” he said aloud, his voice echoing over the walls of the shower. “What the fuck have I done.”  
He peered down at the bottles on the shelf and decided to clean himself off all the way.  
Within time, he switched off the water and stepped out of the shower with the towel wrapped around his waist, right under the curvature of his underbelly. He almost didn't want to look at himself in the mirror, but a great deal of fine grained condensation had found its way onto the glass. Using his free hand, he rubbed off the tiny water droplets to reveal the boy in the mirror, the boy with the wet pile of hair atop his head accompanied with wavy strands which dripped onto the linoleum floor and the smooth counter before him. The boy with the scar over his left eye which, along with the right, had turned a deep shade of pink from all of the crying, even with all of his tears now washed away with the soothing warm water. The boy with the round face, now much rounder from all of that delicious food, and accentuated by the incoming facial hair.  
He glanced over at the scale tucked in the far corner of the room, and then back down at his waist, which blocked the view of half of his feet. He rested his free hand right over his belly button to give himself a caress. Mia had taken her gentle touch with her: it was just him with his own hand now.  
But his hand lacked the same love she bestowed onto him: even in the wake of the soft soap all over his body, the skin on the palm of his hand felt rough and dry, too rough. Rough from holding onto those drumsticks during their sets. He winced at the thought of touching her and his hand grating up against her soft skin. It almost felt pointless to give himself the same love she gave him if his hands were going to be this rough.  
He turned his hand over to examine the back and noticed his veins emerging out. She didn't have that; she didn't have that elaborate network of veins poking out of her skin.  
Lars peered up at his reflection in that small patch of clean mirror before him, at his deep eyes surrounded by reddened puffy skin. Even with hair on his head, he looked like death. A gaunt face staring back at him.  
All the love in the world had disappeared right before his very eyes, and since he dug himself into this mess, he needed to bring it back for himself. Bring himself back to life.  
He unraveled the towel from around his waist to better dry off his hair and then put it around his waist again before stepping out of the bathroom, and into the hotel hallway. He moved the notch on the door so as to keep it open, and padded down the carpet to the room three doors down, barefoot and wearing nothing more than a towel.  
He lifted a hand to knock on the center panel a total of three times. Silence.  
And then the door opened to reveal Jason, also wearing nothing but a towel and with his hair dripping wet.  
“Oh, hey, Lars, what's up?” he answered. Lars peered on either side of him to make sure no one eavesdropped on them.  
“Jason—may I ask you a favor?”  
“Of course.”  
Lars peered behind him at the pie tin atop his dresser and next to the tiny television on the stand against the wall. He nibbled on his bottom lip. On one hand, he thought of Jason throwing it at his face so the crust and whatever resided inside fell over his face and neck and his hair. He believed that would set him free.  
But on the other hand—  
“Could you—” He stuck out the tip of his tongue and closed his eyes.  
“Are you okay? Your eyes are all red.”  
“Oh, yeah. I got a little—soap in my eyes. It's just—are you sharing that pie with anyone?”  
Jason turned his head and gestured back to the tin.  
“What, this pie back there?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Not really,” he replied with a shrug. “Sandra gave it to me yesterday, but I haven't really been able to eat it up as of yet. Would you like some?”  
“Yes, please.”  
Lars padded into the room and Jason shut the door behind him, and then rounded past him to fetch a plate and a knife to slice up the pie. The crust was golden brown and with four slits on the middle in the shape of a four petaled flower.  
“What kind is it?”  
“Blueberry,” answered Jason as he picked up the knife. Lars flashed back on the blueberry cobbler he had shared with her in Eureka. He ran over that sweet memory, that decadent cobbler with the fresh berries and the crispy crust right before him. On top of this, they were never going back to Eureka together! And even with another Smell the Magic coming into fruition there, he thought there was no way he could make another return, even if he had a feel of that drive now.  
Careful not to force it into a crumble, Jason picked up a slice of pie and placed it on the plate for him. A part of him wanted Jason to pick up that fork there and shovel bites into his mouth for him, but he had already handed the plate to him and Lars lost all resistance to the pie. He stuck the first bite into his mouth and already began to miss Mia even more than when he was in the shower.  
Jason, meanwhile, picked up a smoldering joint which rested on the top of the dresser next to the tin. He picked up his lighter from the other side of the television and lit up the end of the joint. That smoke was about to float towards Lars for an extra rumble in his belly.  
He leaned his hip against the side of the dresser as he ate up the slice of pie. Every bite of pie was another bite moving away from her, and the foul odor of the burning marijuana only sent him back to the baking show. But he kept eating. He kept eating up the slice of pie on the plate before him.  
Jason coughed from the smoke as he took a seat there on the foot of the bed. Lars lifted his gaze from the plate to behold Jason tossing his hair back from his face before taking another huff with his eyes closed. He returned to the slice with a sigh through his nose and then decided to make a return to his room to be alone.  
Lars carried his plate with his left hand and opened the door with his right, and headed back to his room. He pushed open the door, still with his free hand, and then let it shut behind him before he took a seat on the edge of the bed. The princess cake from earlier still lay on the bedspread before the pillows, the cake still with a nibble missing out of it. The very sight of it was enough to bring tears back to brim his eyes.  
He kept eating at the slice of pie before him, and soon he finished it and set the empty plate on the table next to his hip. Holding onto his towel, he took a seat on the bed and reached behind him for the cake. He felt his chin and his lips tremble at the sight of it, this little slice of Scandinavia in his hands. He might as well have been holding his own heart.  
His eyes burned as he brought it to his mouth. The marzipan and the cream were so sweet, and the jam on the inside kissed him hello, and the cake itself felt as soft as his love handles, but the lovely feeling had all but disappeared. Despite laying there for a time, the cake still tasted fresh, as if he had taken it right out of the bag.  
He stood up to unfurl the towel and then picked up one corner to dab his eyes with it. He stood there, naked in the middle of his hotel room in the middle of the night, eating a princess cake. Once he slipped the last bite into his mouth, he decided to put on some clean underwear and call it night.  
Lars crawled underneath the covers, and turned off the light on the nightstand.  
Had someone walked in right then, they would've seen the young Danish man laying on his side under the covers crying himself to sleep.  
He awoke to one of their stage hands knocking on his door and calling his name. He rolled onto his back, and his hair, still wet, pressed against his back like a sheet of ice; he lay there flat to better hear his voice yelling through the panel around the corner.  
“Come on, Lars! You've got twenty minutes!”  
“Twenty minutes,” he whispered in a broken voice. He lifted a hand to rub his eyes, both of which still swollen and tired from all of the tears he had cried out. He rolled his head over the pillow to check the time and saw he was indeed running late for sound check. He rolled out from underneath the covers and placed both soles of his feet onto the carpet at the same time. He dove down to his overnight bag to search for some clean clothes when he heard another knock on the door.  
“Lars?” It was James.  
“Lars, are you awake?”  
“Yes! I just slept a little late is all—”  
He hurried into the bathroom for his jeans and slipped them on over his legs and his hips. He had just zipped up when James spoke once again.  
“Can I come in?”  
Lars darted to the door and flung it open to see James standing there in a Faith No More shirt, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and a sly grin on his face. He entered the room even though Lars still needed to dress more: he returned to his overnight bag on the floor.  
“Where's my Venom shirt—” he wondered aloud.  
“Where'd Mia go?” asked James.  
“She had to—run home real quick for—something. Where the fuck is my Venom shirt! Oh, here it is.” He yanked the black shirt over his head and down his body when James spoke again.  
“You know I broke up with Ashley right?”  
Lars glanced back at him, towering over him and the foot of the bed. He could feel the knot in his stomach returning at the sound of that.  
“I do, yes,” he answered, feeling his throat tighten up.  
“You know why I broke up with her?”  
“—no,” said Lars with slight hesitation and a zipping up of his belongings.  
“She told me I was too careerist.”  
Lars stood to his feet and knitted his eyebrows at that.  
“Too careerist?”  
“Yeah. Weird, right? Given she's going to school to be an actress and whatnot. Anyways, come on—we're going to be late for sound check.”  
Lars picked up his room key off of the table and followed James out to the hallway; the door closed behind him as he ran a hand through his long hair. It was clear he had no idea who to believe at that time.


	96. Chapter 96

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Shhhhhh. it's okay, it's okay.  
> This is our dirty little secret.  
> We're all alone in the city,  
> my hands are stoned with pity.  
> I could get by or get high with fifty,  
> and I don't feel pretty... today.”  
> -”House of Secrets”, Otep

Lars had helped himself to three full plates of food for their lunch break, and followed it up with another one loaded up with desserts. He had arrived at sound check feeling famished as if he hadn't eaten in days. All of the food before him enticed him like a new lover. However, he needn't a new lover: all he had was himself and his own feelings for himself and for his body. He could not shake James' words from his mind, and he had no clue what to believe with either of their accounts. But he had faith that he had the truth with him at the moment as he downed another triad of spring rolls and a pair of double chocolate cookies before giving his belly a satisfied pat.  
James and Kirk congregated at a table across the room while Jason had stepped outside of the room and disappeared. Lars on the other hand, made his place on a pillowy cushion right underneath a bay window so the sun bathed him in the golden early afternoon light; he leaned his back against the wall perpendicular to the window. He had this little nook to himself, and thus he stretched his legs and rested his hands right over his stomach so as to relax even more.  
And yet no matter what he put into his mouth, he couldn't help but think of her.  
Lars stared up at the ceiling with Mia still running through his mind. He glanced down at his hands and lifted them up to examine his palms, both of which still appeared too rough, far too grating and rough to give himself a loving rub, and he had eaten a fair amount. He massaged the bottoms of his palms with the pads of his fingers, before raising his left hand to rub his eye: a reddened spot on his cheek bone had formed at some point, and he knew it was from the crying. He wouldn't even reach down under the band of his underwear and touch himself with that dry skin.  
He gazed out the window at the low skyline and the Space Needle, that narrow white tower looming high to the sky with a glimmer of a diamond atop the highest point. He rubbed his eye again, and that time he rubbed it a bit too hard, and he felt his eye burn with a tear. But to think she was just there not long ago, up there in that restaurant with Jerry and Soundgarden. At this moment, she had returned to Portland. Given she had separated from her husband, she was there all alone, much like how he reclined alone in that window seat. He had no idea if he could walk those streets again without thinking of her, especially since that city had her name written all over it.  
Tiny filmy dark gray clouds dotted the otherwise bright blue sky, and the very sight of it sent a chill up his spine. Perhaps it would rain again, and thus he pictured himself standing under the clouds feeling the wind at his back and the rain over his face to pour over him.  
His hand caressed over the fabric of his shirt, the protective covering over his belly, warm and growing warmer from the feeling of the sun over him, with that soft silky full feeling, and yet feeling lonely, without a soul of his equal to touch him and love him. He leaned his head back against the wall and let his whole body go limp. He closed his eyes and saw nothing but bright red behind his eyelids.  
“Lars?”  
Her voice sliced through his moment of solitude: he opened his eyes to see her hovering over his feet and with a plate of chocolate and black cherry cake and a pair of brownies in one hand.  
“Oh, hello, Sonia, I didn't even know you were here,” he greeted her.  
“I was just looking for a place to sit—” She gestured to the table James and Kirk had taken for themselves and several of their crew members had joined them, thus leaving very little room for anyone else there. “—and I saw you here—I thought you were asleep.”  
“I was about ready to fall asleep. The sun here is making me all warm and lazy.” He pulled his knees up towards his chest, albeit while accentuating the full feeling in his belly: he was about to lift himself up to make more room for her but it was as if he had a big bowl of gelatin inside of him. Lars stopped himself with a stifled “oof—” from his parted lips. He belched in his throat and brought two fingers to his mouth to stop it in its place; Sonia meanwhile, took her seat in front of his lower legs and his feet regardless of what he did.  
“So how're you feeling?” she asked him over the chatter of the crew across the room; he blinked several times at her in surprise. That was an odd thing to ask of him, but he answered because she asked.  
“Me? I'm feeling—better.”  
“Got a nice full tummy I see.” She nodded her head to behind his thighs and he gave himself another pat.  
“That's an understatement if I ever heard one.”  
She giggled before picking up her fork to dig into the cake.  
“Did you have some of this cake?”  
“I did. I had like—two slices. Big slices, like they were the size of the Space Needle out there.”  
“Two? I knew you were a hearty eater, but my goodness.”  
He rubbed the bottoms of his palms with the tips of his fingers once more.  
“Do you have any lotion?”  
“Any lotion? Not on me, no.”  
“Damn.”  
“You've got—” She set down her fork and pointed at her cheek. “—a little red spot right underneath your eye.”  
“What, this? Eh, I think I just rubbed it a bit too hard.”  
Sonia paused, even as Kirk cracked a joke and James and the whole crew erupted into a round of laughter. She leaned over his knees to look right into his eyes. He tried to shrink down from her gaze but she stared into his eyes, and then the expression on her face softened to show him comfort.  
“Lars,” she began in a mild voice, even with the noise on the other side of the room, “did something happen?”  
“Did something happen? Like what?”  
“Lars, I'm a theatre student, en route to becoming an actress. Part of what I study is facial expressions and emotions, even those hidden in the eyes. I know that red mark, too—I've gotten it after crying, and so has Marcia and Ashley. Something happened. Something that made you cry.”  
Lars nibbled on his bottom lip and turned his head to make sure they remained out of earshot. He returned to her with a gentle gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach. He had never told anyone else his true feelings, not even Mia, and yet, here was Sonia asking him about it. On one hand, he refrained from telling her the truth, given he had no idea if Ashley's story had any truth to it whatsoever. But then again, Mia had left, and on top of this, Sonia never spoke much and he felt he could trust her with his words.  
“Okay,” he started in such a low voice that she leaned over his knees to better hear him. “But please—please.” He lay his hand on her fingers, which she lay over his right knee. “I am begging you. Do not tell the guys, do not tell Ashley—especially Ashley—your sister, your mother, anybody. Just keep this between you and I, alright?”  
“Yeah, yeah, sure.”  
“Okay.”  
He fetched up a sigh, his chest and his belly swelling even more with the breath. Even though his Venom shirt was still rather loose, the fabric hugged against him like a light little tummy kiss.  
“Mia and I broke up.”  
Sonia gasped and she brought a hand to her mouth.  
“Noooo!” she said in a hushed voice.  
“Yes.” He nodded and it was as if a dead weight had lifted off of his shoulders. “It—It—It fucked me up to say in the least.”  
Sonia knitted her eyebrows together and looked as though she was about to burst into tears right then. But she kept it under wraps given the setting around them. She stared right in front of her for a moment in disbelief, and then she returned to him with her lips twitching.  
“Wait. Did she—” She turned her head again, this time to assure they still remained out of earshot; she then lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Did she tell you?”  
“Yes, she did. But—” He ran his tongue along the top of his bottom lip as he took another glimpse to his right once more. “—understand that I am trusting you on this. I need you to keep this a secret. I need you to keep this between you and me. I don't want James, or Kirk, or Jason for that matter, to know about this.”  
“May I ask why?”  
“Because I just—I just rather they didn't.”  
“Okay. Okay, that's—fair enough. But it's something you wanted to get off your chest.”  
“Precisely. And let me to tell you that it feels a hell of a lot better now that I have told the truth to someone who was kind of in my periphery.”  
“And somebody in your periphery who was close at that, too. I just have a question.”  
He raised his eyebrows in inquisition.  
“Is it okay if I tell Mia that we talked?”  
He nibbled his bottom lip as he knew he was playing with fire here.  
“Yes,” he answered, and then raised a finger, “if she promises the same thing. To not tell a soul.”  
Sonia nodded her head and returned to her cake: she sliced off a piece from the tip with the edge of her fork and held it before her mouth when she spoke again.  
“The body is a house of secrets, Lars,” she remarked. “And looking at your midriff area, I can easily say that you have a fair amount of said secrets with Mia.”  
“Indeed I do, Sonia—darling.” He flashed her a wink and she showed him a sly grin in return.  
“What you playin' at, big boy?”  
“The—idea of—” He hesitated for a second so as to select his words. “—you—feeding me a bite of that cake.”  
“You just ate a hell of a lot of food, though,” she pointed out, “at least that's what the little hill poking up from underneath your shirt is telling me.”  
“That was damn good cake, though,” he retorted. “Mia would feed me food.”  
“Well, that was Mia. Kirk and I got a little rough sometimes in our encounters but we never involved food into the mix.”  
“I was not implying getting rough, darling,” he corrected.  
“Right—I've seen you getting all big and full like this and getting this look in your eye like you want it. I saw it on Bainbridge and I saw it when you and Mia made out in our hallway that time. You get a look in your eye like you want it.”  
“I do want it,” he blurted out. She turned her head all the way towards him, and then bowed her head as if she was looking at him over a pair of glasses.  
“Associated food with love making,” she noted, with a raise of her left eyebrow. “That's—That's actually kinkier than any of the screwery Kirk and I ever did together. And—you know—sometimes we got Marcia involved into the mix.”  
She held the fork in a vertical position before her mouth as she continued.  
“But you do want it, though.”  
“I do. I do, I do, I do, I do,” he pleaded.  
“It's understandable—you're lonely and you offered your heart to Mia, and she played with it and then she kind of threw it against the wall. But Lars—since I'm keeping a secret with you, how about you keep a secret with me?”  
“Gladly. I will take secrets to the grave with me if I must.”  
Sonia took another glimpse across the room and then held the fork before his mouth. He rested his hands upon the cushion so as to push himself closer to the bite of cake looming before him. Gazing into her eyes as if to seduce her, he opened his mouth and bit down on that piece of cake. He moved his head back with his mouth full and the butterflies back inside of his stomach. He leaned back, never removing his gaze from her. Sonia returned the tines of her fork to the cake for another bite, and then she flicked her hair to the side to show him her neck. As he digested the bite, she showed him a sly smile.  
“You're actually—” she said in a low enough voice for him to hear over the chatter on the other side of the room, “you're kinda cute.”  
He swallowed the bite and he could feel himself swelling up on the inside.  
“Kind of?” he teased her, flashing her a grin and raising his eyebrows underneath his bangs. “Just kind of?”  
She rolled her eyes. “Alright, you're very cute. And ever since you started gaining a little weight, you've just gotten a lot cuter. I mean, look at your cheeks. They're so full and chubby. It's almost as if they're full of love.”  
“I like how nondescript you are,” he noted, feeling his face grow warm.  
She took a bite of brownie and then followed it up with another bite of cake. More laughter from the other side of the room; she eyed him with her mouth full, and then she leaned over his knees again.  
“Would you like to go into another room?” she offered him. “You know—where it's quiet?”  
“I thought you would never ask,” he replied, sliding his legs off of the cushion so he sat upright next to her. The side of his hip brushed up against hers, and then he lifted his gaze from her plate to her face. She nodded behind her to the doorway leading out to a hallway.  
Lars clasped a hand to his belly as he stood to his feet; meanwhile James and Kirk paid no attention to the two of them leaving the room to the deserted corridor outside. Sonia kept one hand free as she guided him down the hard stone floor towards a closed door off to the side; she opened it to reveal the tiny room filled with wooden shelves.  
“Is this the janitor's closet?” he asked her as she reached up to the light bulb dangling from the ceiling: pale yellow light washed over the room.  
“It is. Well, was, I should say. Kirk took me up here when you and Mia were at the baking show. As far as he and I both know, the janitor has moved to another room, if you know what I mean.”  
He closed the door right as he heard their laughter echoing from down the hall. It was totally silent in that room, save for Sonia's soft moans from enjoying the sweets on her plate. She handed him a brownie and he slipped it into his mouth. She set her empty plate on the shelf before her and clapped her hands together, the sound not going anywhere.  
“Let me see that belly, boy.”  
Lars peeled off his shirt to show her his body.  
“You like it rubbed, don't you?” she asked him with a sly grin as he lay the shirt on the shelf next to her plate.  
“I do,” he answered with his mouth full. He swallowed and could feel himself growing larger right then. Sonia scanned his waist and then gazed into his face.  
“That's a sexy belly—almost too sexy for such a cute boy.”  
She put her arms around his thick waist and pressed her breasts against his bare chest. Her hands caressed the pockets of flesh over his hips; she tasted of sugar and spice, like Mia, but there was something else. That lack of Puerto Rico, now replaced by the kiss of the daughter of the oldest profession.  
It was something as she ran the pad of her tongue over his lips and the side of his face.  
It was more than something. It was Sonia.  
It was Sonia giving him what Mia couldn't give him, and as far as Lars knew, she was alone, without Kirk by her side. As far as he knew, anyway, as she left a series of kisses on the side of his neck and breathed into his ear.


	97. Chapter 97

“Lay down, lover,” he begged her. “Lay down on the floor, and I shall lie with you.”  
“Come to mama—she'll make everything all better, I promise. Come here—”  
Lars had lay on his back on the cold floor, and patted on the hard stone to beckon her down towards him. Sonia took off her blouse before she loomed over him with her hands on either side of his shoulders and her knees on either side of his hips.  
That sexy black brassiere, her slender body looking mighty fine, and her mousy curls dangling down from all sides of her head like a series of ribbons. He gazed into her eyes, those rich brown eyes reminiscent of melted dark chocolate. She was much slimmer than Mia, and he felt a need to hold onto her hips to feel her.  
He could feel it between the two of them, from the parting of her lips to her eyes scanning over his face and his neck. His chest rose and fell with a slight shudder of arousal, or from fear. He was going to do it. He was about to come closer to Sonia to rid himself of his loneliness.  
“Touch me,” he whispered. “Touch me, please. Touch me, please. Please. Please, I am begging you. Behage.”  
He held still as she ran the tip of her finger down the middle of his chest, as light as a feather. He closed his eyes; every moan from his throat carried with it an ounce of pain, and not the tiny spikes of pain he experienced while making love to Mia. He had no idea where all of these emotions were coming from. Perhaps it was Mia's absence and Sonia's presence, or perhaps it was something else: every touch felt like a glide further and further away from what he once knew about Mia and most of all, about touching. The feel of her skin on his skin was almost too much to bear for him: he needed more than that.  
“Help me—help me, darling.”  
“Would you like a kiss?”  
“Please.”  
She leaned in for a second kiss on his lips. So gentle and tender. She stared into his eyes as she caressed the side of his face and down onto his neck; he licked his lips before speaking again.  
“Whenever I feel quite full, like I do now—” he started in a husky croak of a voice.  
“Yes?” she asked in a soft whisper.  
“I—I—”  
“Yes? Yes, baby?”  
“I like having my belly rubbed.”  
“Rubbed?”  
“A nice—sweet gentle massage right over my waist and then over the spot where my stomach is. Come on—come on—touch me—touch me there—”  
She lay both of her palms on the roundest part of his belly and moved them both in circles opposite one another as if she was smearing something on over his skin. The feeling was so unique, a radical change from the single hand he had grown acquainted with from Mia. And yet, it felt so much better than that. The skin on her hands felt like the smoothest of silk over his warm flesh. He relaxed the muscles in his hips and his thighs and tilted his head back; she leaned over his chest to kiss his neck.  
“Play me, darling,” he breathed out, still feeling her hands there on his waist. “Play me as if you are kneading fresh dough.”  
Her fingers caressed his belly and then she lowered her face there to give him a kiss. Those soft lips upon his skin forced a gasp out of his throat, followed by a soft moan. He nibbled on his bottom lip as her tongue slithered out of her mouth and onto his skin to better taste him. He dared not tell her about the touching of his bones like what Mia did, lest she try to fulfill that same feeling. Sonia was so close to him at that point that she might as well just peel off his jeans and begin riding him, but she kept licking him and kissing him right there around his waist until she climbed upon his body. She held onto either side of his face as she pressed her lips onto his; he slid his hands over her back so as to unfasten her bra but could not find that hook.  
A slip on? No, one that fastened in the front: he felt the cold sliver of metal in between her breasts press up against his chest.  
Her hands stroked either side of his neck and then over his shoulders and down his chest. She gazed into his eyes as his breath waved and shortened as if he was in a great deal of physical pain.  
“Is everything okay?” she asked him in a kind tone of voice. “You're shaking an awful lot right now.”  
“I just—I'm not used to this.” His voice broke to a pained whimper. She stroked the silky skin underneath his jaw and on the side of his neck, and then she ran the tips of her fingers along the hair growing on his face. He swore he didn't need anyone to help himself, but here was Sonia right on top of him. How he wanted her, but how he wanted to be alone on his back there on the floor of the closet; how he wanted to be alone with his thoughts and his stomach. A part of him wanted to push her off of him but she had already began comforting him.  
“Let's just take our time,” she whispered, kissing his face again.  
“I'm not used to it but I do want it—”  
“Your body says 'yes', but your mind is telling you 'no'. Lars—close your eyes—go on, do it. Close your eyes. I taught Kirk this when he and I were doing it the first time. This was something I learned in psychology and in one of my acting classes in order to better come into character for a play or a show. It's to help you climb out of your head and live inside of your body as it is under a veil. Close your eyes.”  
Lars shut his eyes and felt his lips trembling.  
“Okay—now just relax. Relax—relax starting from your toes and your feet—got it?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Okay. Now move up your legs—all up your legs, including your knees and your thighs and your hips. Relax everything—relax and let go. Just focus on my voice. Focus on the sound of my voice and your own breath. Feel it—feel it all down inside of you, inside of your body. Feel it all relaxing and letting go. Let go of all the tension and all of the pain that you feel. Okay—now tell me, baby. What is it that you don't like about yourself?”  
“My round face—” he said it, almost without thinking. “—my whole body, in fact.”  
“Well, just relax everything. Keep relaxing and focusing on my voice—” He felt her fingers running through his hair and over his scalp. His chest rose and fell in a slower, steadier fashion as he let all of his muscles from the waist down loosen and lax, as if he had crawled into bed and prepared to fall asleep.  
“Relax your belly—every inch of it. Just let go of the thought and pertain to the feeling—the feeling inside of your flesh.”  
He breathed in deeper that time, so much that the whole middle of his body swelled with the incoming breath. Sonia's fingers brushed his bangs back so as to pressed her lips against his forehead; he felt her hand lay upon his belly as if to give him a rub, but she never went that way. He could feel her there, but it was as if he had turned off his mind. He had turned off his mind in the same fashion as when Mia fed him an enormous amount of food and he could hardly speak.  
He could feel her lips near his ear, the plush skin brushing every so lightly against the outside of his ear that it almost tickled.  
“Okay—now when I kiss you on the neck, you are going to open your eyes and enjoy everything I do for you. You will give in to the truest desires of your heart and your body. Your body is beautiful and sensual and treated well. Your face is beautiful in every which way possible. I will be your whore and your mistress right now. Give yourself to me and I will give myself to you. Focus on my voice—focus—”  
He went silent, and then she kissed the side of his neck, a delicate kiss with a touch of saliva mixed in. He opened his eyes and it was as if he had woken up to a brand new day. The backs of his feet felt a bit cold from the floor underneath him, but were ultimately cradled by the fabric of his jeans; his knees extended to as far as he could make them; his belly raised as high as he could make it over the middle of his body; his chest rose and fell with a steady, calmed breath. He rolled his head over to see her laying next to him on her side; he gazed on at her with his lips parted as if to beckon another kiss from her, and she slipped her tongue into his mouth. This time he could fix upon her and the curvature of her velvet tongue and the softness of her lips. He didn't speak, but rather let her tongue and her hands do the talking for him.  
He felt her grip onto his right shoulder to roll him onto his side. All the little groans she made inside of her throat, and all of the soft touches and caresses of her hand along his back, his hips, and his butt; again, without thinking, he held onto her lower back and pressed his left thigh against her right, and lifted his right thigh over the side of her hip. He wanted her: his body wanted her.  
He swore her fingers unbuttoned his jeans but rather it was her hand holding onto the crotch of his jeans. The pad of her thumb rubbed against the head which in turn brought a groan out of his throat.  
Meanwhile, her other hand stroked his chest: he kept breathing at a slow pace as she followed the indented curve that was his breast bone, but when she reached the spot over his stomach, he parted his lips and a soft moan escaped his mouth. He stared hard into her face as Sonia's hand glided down his belly to join her other hand at the crotch of his jeans. He gasped at the feel of both of her hands holding him.  
“I've got you,” she whispered. “I've got you right where I want you. Exactly where I want you. Forget about Mia. Move on from her and what she did, and follow me.”  
She leaned into his face and the glazed over look upon his eyes.  
“You're an animal—I can feel it. I can feel it just by looking into your face. When I kiss you again, you will come out of this state and be with me. I will give you my full truth.”  
She pressed her lips to his, and he blinked several times; she moved her head back to show him a grin.  
“How do you feel?”  
“Better. Like I just did a shitload of stretching.”  
“That's how you do it, big boy. There's something else, though.”  
“I'm a little hungry.”  
James' voice floated in from the hallway in a muffled tone right then.  
“Where's Lars? He's gonna be late to get dressed and get his ass ready.”  
“Shit—” he grunted and lifted himself into an upright position. He peered about the shelves in the room.  
“Where's my shirt?”  
“There.” Sonia gestured to the shelf above their heads and he stood up to fetch his Venom shirt, and pulled it over his body. He lifted his hair out of the back side of the collar and turned to her right as she was sitting upright herself; he reached down to help her to her feet and she stood next to him.  
“Lars?” James called out again.  
“Where are you, man?” Kirk followed up.  
Lars turned to her with his eyebrows raised and his bangs still disheveled.  
“Okay, remember, not a word to anyone,” he reminded her. “Please.”  
“Not a single word,” she assured him, reaching for her blouse on another shelf. “If anyone asks where you were, I'll tell them you were taking a nap.”  
“And—remember—if you must tell Mia, make sure she doesn't say a word to anyone, either.”  
“Yes, yes, yes. You said you were hungry. What would you like to eat?”  
“Pasta, please. I need something to keep me going all night, darling. By the way, how long have we been in here?”  
“Apparently long enough to make it to just prior to the start of the show.” She fixed her hair and then picked up her empty plate from the first shelf. Lars turned to the door and opened it just enough to make sure James and Kirk had stepped out of earshot: he opened the door and stepped into the corridor. Sonia followed him back to the vast room, where, by mere chance, the aroma of pasta and tomato sauce greeted the two of them. Lars flashed her a smirk as they reached the doorway.  
“Alright,” he said in a low voice and with a momentary raise of his eyebrows.  
“Yeah, you like to eat, don't you?”  
“Eat and fill my stomach—oh yes, darling.”  
“How about you wait here and I'll make the two of us a plate each?” she suggested.  
“Please.” He gestured to the table next to the doorway and Sonia stepped to the stack of clean plates, and scooped up a rather large bundle of linguine out of the pot there on the top of the table. She picked up another bundle before spreading that fresh tomato sauce over the top; she handed him the plate and he took it from her with a pleased smile. He ambled back to his seat on the cushion before the window right as Sonia fixed up a plate of pasta for herself and James and Kirk returned to the room.  
“There you are!” the former declared in a big booming voice. “Dude—come on, eat that in the locker room. We're going to start late otherwise.”  
“Okay, okay, okay, just give me a minute to taste this first.”  
“Just out of curiosity, where'd you go?” asked Kirk: Lars took a brief glimpse over at Sonia who shook her head at him.  
“I took a walk and then a nap. You know, trying to save my energy and whatnot.”  
“I see. Well, come on, Jason's getting ready and we should be, too.”  
He lifted a forkful of linguine and took a bite. All the tomatoes, the rosemary, the basil, and of course, the fresh linguine welcomed him to a new chapter, one without Mia in it. And then he stood to his feet and ambled towards the door to prepare himself for the show that night. James and Kirk stepped back out to the hallway first, which left Lars to flash Sonia a wink; she in turn blew him a kiss.


	98. Chapter 98

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I'm only happy when it rains.  
> I'm only happy when it's complicated,  
> And though I know you can't appreciate it,  
> I'm only happy when it rains.”  
> -”Only Happy When It Rains”, Garbage

“God damn, what a show tonight—I'm just going to go to bed—”  
Lars stripped off the sweat band from the crown of his head and tossed it onto the table on the other side of the room. He had broken a tiny bit of sweat that night, but he had still worn it in any chance of doing so during the night. He could hardly shake all of their cheers out from his mind. All of the noise, that vast wall of sound all before him left his mind and his heart in a frenzy. He took off his tennis shoes and his clothes and then he lay on the top of the bed on his back in hopes to relax.  
His body was warm but never broke a sweat. His heart pounded inside of his chest from the rush. His stomach remained in a steady state, without a grumble to found inside. And yet, in spite of laying on his back on the soft mattress and clean sheets, his muscles twitched and he had to bend his knees and shuffle his feet in order to relax, and even that brought more movements.  
He climbed to his feet to switch off the light in hopes of that helping him. Darkness except for a stream of light through a crack in the curtains on the other side of the room.  
He lay back down and gave it another try.  
He finally dozed off for about an hour and a half, only to wake up the sound of people downstairs shouting and cheering.  
“What—What the—fock—” Lars rolled his head over his pillow to find it was almost two o'clock in the morning. He then rolled onto his side and closed his eyes again in hopes to fall back asleep. The noise continued, both downstairs and inside of his body. He finally did feel the sweat beading along the sides of his neck and on his chest from the stuffiness of his room, but it was nothing too prominent. He returned to his back but that still brought nothing to him.  
Lars lay there on his back with his arms stretched out from his body and his left knee bent up from the top of the mattress.  
“I can't,” he said aloud. “I can't—I cannot fall asleep. I need something.”  
He rolled out of bed and padded into the bathroom. He took off his underwear before climbing into the shower: he turned on the cold water and closed his eyes.  
It was like jumping into the ocean or into the Øresund without a wet suit. His eyes popped open and he gasped from the iciness upon his chest and his neck: everything contracted and yet surged forth. He bowed his head so the water coated his hair and his face. He panted from the cold all around him, but it was enough. It was more than enough for him, and he soon switched off the water with a gasp and a shudder from his body.  
He pushed his hair back from his face and his neck before reaching for the towel on the rack next to the shower. He dried off his hair first, followed by his body, and then he returned to the rest of the room. He turned on the light and stood before the wall next to the window.  
“I have no idea how to operate this thing,” he muttered to himself as he eyed the thermostat; he then turned to the window as the noise downstairs continued. “Oh, fuck it.”  
Lars turned to the window and slid it open, and the crisp night air accompanied with the noise downstairs flowed into the stuffy room. He gave his hair another drying before he slung the towel over the back of the singular chair in the room and then turned off the light again. He crawled back into bed and lay on his side this time. He finally did fall asleep but awoke at a quarter to six and the first rays of blood orange sunlight streaming through the window.  
He rubbed his eyes before climbing out of bed. His head throbbed from the lack of sleep; a knock on his door caught his attention, and he looked down to see he had neglected to put his underwear back on. He stepped into the bathroom for a moment when there was another on the door.  
“Hang on, hang on, I'm coming,” he replied in a broken voice and adjusting the waist band on his underwear. He peeked through the peephole to see Sonia on the other side, wrapped up in a bright pink silky bathrobe, and he opened the door part of the way.  
“Sonia, what are you doing here?” he asked her as part of his greeting to her.  
“I just wanted to see if you were awake,” she answered.  
“I've pretty much been awake,” he confessed, rubbing his eye again. “I have had this—proverbial itch I couldn't seem to scratch—really, I may as well have been up all night—because my—my dick's been driving me crazy.”  
“Would you like some breakfast?” she offered, clutching the belt on her robe.  
“Yeah, I don't see why not. We're here for another show tomorrow night so I might as well relax for a bit.”  
Lars gestured for Sonia to come inside, and she further greeted him with a caress along his thick waist. She took a seat on the foot of his bed and leaned back and crossed her legs: he could see she wore nothing under that robe. He nibbled on his bottom lip and gave his eye another rub.  
“Sonia, I've been up all night and my head hurts,” he told her in a blunt tone of voice.  
“Which one?” And he clutched the side of his head; she patted on the foot of the bed next to her to beckon him there next to him. “Come—I'll make it all better.”  
He grimaced at the gesture, especially since his temple pounded with pain accentuated by his own pulse.  
“Sonia, that's very kind of you—but my head is killing me. And I need something to eat, too. I can't give you what you want unless I eat something.”  
“Oh, come on. I'm sure you've got plenty of bang in your butt and your belly that you could give me three orgasms at the same time.”  
“Can I at least get something for my head, though?” he asked her as he crouched before his overnight bag for a clean shirt.  
She licked her lips and then shrugged.  
“Sure. I'll be here waiting for you, baby.”  
The last thing he saw before returning to the bathroom to get dressed was her flashing him another enticing wink.  
He ducked back out of the room with his dark blue jeans, the ones he split on his road trip with Mia, and a black buttoned shirt of which he rolled up the sleeves to his elbows. He slipped on his black boots and brushed his hair with his fingers before slipping out of the room before Sonia could say anything else to him.  
Lars headed down the hall to the stairs: he dared not take the elevator lest someone see him in there in his groggy condition.  
Before reaching the door at the bottom of the stairs, he gave his eyes another rub and slipped his hands underneath his hair to lift it out from the collar of his shirt. He entered the otherwise deserted lobby with a greeting of fresh brewed coffee and baked muffins from the next room. He licked his lips from thirst and he continued into the room for a cup of tea and a chocolate muffin.  
Knowing Sonia wasn't leaving the room any time soon, he hung out there in the lobby with his cup of black tea and the double chocolate muffin. And given he was the sole person in there, he lounged on the soft ivory white couch next to the fireplace, breaking off pieces of the muffin and slipping them into his mouth. Once he finished his muffin, he leaned back against the cushion with his hands atop his belly and relaxed, staring at his cup of hot tea on the table before him. He focused on the plumes of steam emerging from the surface and nothing else, in the manner of what Sonia had taught him the day before.  
At one point, he dozed off, and he awoke to Jason stooping down before him and nudging him.  
“Lars? Lars!”  
He blinked several times and glanced around him.  
“What happened? What time is it?”  
“It's almost eleven.”  
He rubbed his eyes and gaped at him.  
“I slept all day?” was all he could think of right then.  
“Eleven in the morning,” Jason corrected him, standing off to his left with his hands on his hips. “I just came down for kind of a late breakfast and I saw you sleeping here like a little Danish rag doll. For a second, I thought you were passed out so I was a bit worried.”  
Lars sat upright with another rub to his eyes.  
“God—I did not sleep at all last night.”  
“You, too?”  
“Yeah. If I was not getting too hot in my room, I simply could not relax at all from the rush of being up on stage before that crowd. By the way, what was going on down here last night?”  
“A big party, I guess. I got like four hours of sleep but that's my guess.”  
“That's more than what I got.”  
Lars reached for his cup on the table for a drink, and he winced at the bitter taste of the cold black tea.  
“Nasty?”  
“Stone cold. Fuck—” He set the cup back down on the table and gave his eyes another rub.  
“Well since we have a day off, you wanna get something to eat out in town?”  
“I don't see why not. I had a muffin when I came down earlier, but that was it. I could use something else.” He dared not tell Jason about Sonia as he stood to his feet and they ambled out of the lobby together. It was a cool, crisp day in Seattle: pockets of dark gray low clouds dotted the otherwise bright blue sky and the air smelled of salt and rain. They were the sole pedestrians on the street when a little blue pick up truck pulled up the curb next to them.  
“Hey, it's Jerry,” Jason pointed out; the passenger side window rolled down so they could see his long blond hair and his squarish face flashing them both a grin.  
“Yeah, I'd like a side of French fries and a chocolate milkshake,” he cracked as they approached within earshot.  
“Those both sound so good right now, oh my God,” Lars groaned with a slump of his shoulder.  
“Come on in—I'm going to get breakfast over in Ballard.”  
Ballard! Lars flung open the passenger door and climbed into the front seat first; Jason followed right behind him and shut the door. He hunkered down between the two of them as Jerry drove towards Market Street. The further he kept away from Sonia, the better; although Lars was beginning to forget what Mia tasted like as the three of them drove past Belltown, home of Mama's Mexican Kitchen. He could feel the grumble coming inside of his stomach.  
“Most places don't open until much later in the day, but I know a place that's right in your wheel house, Lars,” said Jerry as they slowed down before a tiny diner on the corner, right next to a small Thai restaurant. “They got all kinds of like Scandinavian stuff here.”  
“Alright, now we're getting places,” he joked as they pulled into a spot before the front door.  
Once they stepped inside, Lars recognized the redheaded woman at the bar in a thin beige leather jacket. He turned to Jerry and Jason with a raised finger.  
“You guys go ahead, I need to set a record straight—”  
He held onto the belt loops of his jeans and stepped over to Olivia: he tapped on her shoulder and she lifted her gaze from her book. Her face lit up when she recognized him.  
“Oh, hello,” she greeted him, adjusting her cat eye glasses. “I didn't even know you were here in town.”  
“Are you sure about that? Because there was an awful lot of noise last night that carried over into the wee hours of the morning.”  
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as he stood behind the spindly bar stool next to her.  
“Is anyone sitting here?” he asked her.  
“Oh, no. Have a seat.”  
Lars climbed onto the seat and set his booted feet onto the narrow rail lining the stool legs; the bartender came over to him with an inquisitive look upon his face.  
“Akvavit, please—on the rocks,” he said and the man nodded in affirmation; Lars turned to her once more.  
“Olivia—may I ask of you a favor?”  
She lifted her head again so as to pick up her bookmark. “Yes, of course.”  
She closed the book and eyed him with intent.  
“Now—” he started, bowing his head and lowering his voice. “I don't want it to seem as though I am imposing on your private affairs, so please forgive me if it might seem as though I am doing that.”  
“Okay.”  
“Is there any possibility that I can read Ashley's interview with Kurt before it's formerly published? That is, if it hasn't been already, given it was for school and whatnot.”  
She raised her eyebrows at him. “You want to read my daughter's interview?”  
“Yes. Yes, I do.”  
The tip of her tongue stuck to the corner of her mouth and she showed him a slow blink from behind her glasses. “Is there any particular reason why?”  
“Oh, you know—just—” He ran the tip of his finger along the crease on the right thigh of his jeans. “—Kurt is a fan of my band and—” He raised his gaze back to her without lifting his head. “—I would like to know more about him.”  
He flicked his head up to move his bangs out of the way, and hence, she could look into his eyes.  
“Hm. Air tight reason. But I cannot help but think you are trying to worm your way into this, though.”  
“Now why on Earth would I do that?”  
“Well, because Ashley was with your best friend James, and now she's with Kurt. I feel there is a slight motive to this than what you are actually presenting.”  
“Now, now, if there was a motive, I would have made it obvious. I would have set my hand here—” He lay his hand on the bar so his thumb remained right next to her forearm. “—unbuttoned my shirt thusly—” He unfastened the top two buttons on his shirt with his left hand so as to expose his collar bones, his Deep Purple pendant, and the top of his chest. “—sit up straight to put more emphasis on my middle and then flipped my hair back—” He gave himself another flick of the head. “—and then I probably would have said something like—I don't know—unless there is something that I can do to change your mind. And then I would have ordered you a drink.” He then lifted his hand from the wood to fix the buttons on his shirt, and then he returned his elbow to the edge of the bar. “But I did none of that, now did I?”  
Olivia squinted her eyes at him and then she took off her glasses.  
“Fair enough, Mr. Ulrich.”  
“Now, now,” he wagged a finger at her, “Mr. Ulrich is my father.”  
“Fair enough—Lars.” She showed him a sly grin. “I feel your honesty and your purity here. You know, I look at your face and all I see is a darling young man who wants nothing more than the best for himself and the ones he cares about. The talker, the doer, and the thinker. Not a recursive poet like James, but the eyes, the ears, and the velvet tongue, and also the resident stomach. I will take you home and I will be sure to find the manuscript for you to read before it's shipped off to the press for printing. Just under one condition and a favor for me given I am a journalist: you will not tell anyone about this. All press releases are kept under lock and key from the public until they are ready, lest there be a scandal or a lawsuit against any parties involved, including yourself.”  
“I take secrets to the grave with me if I must,” he pointed out.  
“Good. Then I can trust you and we don't have to sign a contract, something of which I'd have to run to the news station to fetch and there's plenty of red tape surrounding that enough as is. And I am positive that your Danish charm will do wonders.”  
The bartender arrived with their drinks: Lars thanked him, and picked up his akvavit and gave it a swirl.  
“The Danish charm is an acquired taste,” he remarked; “and those who can stand it are worthy of my attention.”  
“You speak like a true play boy, Lars,” Olivia noted, picking up her glass of rich root beer colored Manhattan accompanied with an orange peel and a maraschino cherry.  
“Heh, a play boy, seriously? I must tell you that I try my best, dearest Olivia.” He raised his glass. “To seduction.”  
“To seduction.” They clinked the edges of the glasses together, and they took a drink at the same time. Olivia set her glass down first, and Lars followed suit; she ran the tip of her finger along the edge of her glass before taking another look at him.  
“Seduction—you are quite the very good looking boy, I might say. Quintessential Scandinavian. And the akvavit only adds to it.”  
“I've got some Jewish blood in me, too.”  
“Jewish, really? Do you celebrate Hanukkah?”  
“I'm not that entirely Jewish, actually. Just enough for me to slip out 'oy vey' once in a while and get away with it.”  
She chuckled before she took another sip from her glass.  
“But regardless, you are quite handsome. And you've got the pleasingly plump factor, too, and so we have a boy who's quite dangerous and quite the believable one. All round and soft looking but he's got a twinkle in his eye. He's up to something and he knows what's up, too.”  
“Sounds about right,” he answered, tilting his head forward and giving his glass of akvavit another swirl.  
“So—I should also tell you that when we go back to the house, there's some leftover meatloaf in the fridge. You can have it.”  
“Oh?” He lifted his glass to his mouth again for another sip.  
“Yes. Now finish up that akvavit and tell your buddies over there what's up before I change my mind.” And he downed the glass in one fell swoop before standing up again.


	99. Chapter 99

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I'm tired of living the boss' dream.  
> They'll squeeze you dry man, if you let 'em!  
> Better take your - take your - take your chances  
> If you get 'em!”  
> -”Whores”, Jane’s Addiction

Lars reclined on his back on the bed in the loft of Olivia's house in Queen Anne, with the window open to let in the cool breeze coming in from the Puget Sound. He had a plate of meatloaf next to him and the manuscript of Ashley's interview with Kurt, a booklet consisting of four pages of white typewriter paper sandwiched between two protective pieces of yellow parchment and then stapled together. The first thing he noticed was the crispness of the pages. Olivia made sure it stayed in top, pristine condition: she was a journalist after all.  
Lars opened to the first page to read the full interview as if it were a script to a play:

“So, Kurt. Let's begin with the few obvious questions. The first is what are your influences?”  
“Influences? Well, for starters, I have been a big fan of the Beatles for years. I also love Black Sabbath and Devo, and of course the Pixies, the Wipers, and the Ramones. I like heavy metal, too: I absolutely love Metallica and I feel they're a good band who are really going to go places in the future. On the other hand, I feel like my band is best summed up as Black Sabbath playing The Knack while Blue Cheer watched.”  
“Next is when did you find out when you would be in a band? Like, when did you meet Krist and Chad?”  
“Well, I started playing guitar when I was real young. It was like my escape from my home life. I met Krist almost four years ago when we attended high school down in Aberdeen, but we only knew of each other at first. And then when we frequented the practice space of the Melvins—King Buzzo [Osbourne] and Dale [Crover]'s band—that was how we bonded and sparked a friendship. The two of us were just adjacent for a long time and it took that little room in Seattle for us to hit it off. I told him I wanted to form a band but he never replied until I gave him a demo of my project Fecal Matter. It took Krist three years to get back to me and say yes. We hit up this guy Bob—Bob McFadden—on the drums but that fell through after a month. Chad was introduced to us via Ben Shepherd—they're both from Bainbridge Island along with Andy Wood, the blond kid in Mother Love Bone. They all know each other over there and Ben just so happens to know me and Krist and he introduced us to Chad. Right now, we have Chad in our periphery, but we currently have a new drummer, Aaron, and currently we're working on material for an album with Sub Pop. If it falls through with Aaron, we'll probably hit up Chad or Dale or somebody else. You know, like we'll put an ad in a paper or something of that nature. But as of right now, nothing is set in stone and all Krist, Aaron, and I can do right now is focus on staying sane and writing and doing something with my demos and of course, that one song that I've got. The one that's about a girl.”  
“How did you decide on the name Nirvana?”  
“Well, at first, Krist and I threw out a myriad of names, from Skid Row and Ted Ed Fred. I even suggested the idea of keeping the name Fecal Matter but then I thought of Nirvana, as in the Buddhist concept of achieving eternal bliss. I wanted a name that was beautiful or nice instead of something vicious sounding.”

Lars then flipped through the other pages in hopes of finding something, anything, that would give him a clue to when Ashley interrupted the interview by lunging forth to Kurt, be it a large gap or a break in the text. But he found nothing. Nothing more than a simple interview between a young lady and a young man. On one hand, the sight of Kurt showing love for his band made him smile, and he felt much closer to him as a result; he felt more than merely the punk kid who liked their song “Whiplash”. But on the other hand, he needed answers.  
When he reached the back page, he spotted a hand written note from Ashley saying the interview lasted twenty minutes, as like a mental note to herself. Twenty minutes, and he had no idea if that was an accumulative total, as if the interview had been broken up into parts, or if took place in one sitting. Either way, it sent him reeling.  
“That is it?” he asked aloud, keeping his voice low in hopes that Olivia would not hear him since he left the door ajar. “That is it? That right there is fucking it? You have got to be kidding me.”  
Lars closed the manuscript and lay it over his thighs for a moment to rub his eyes again. For all he knew, Ashley broke up with James for no apparent reason. She not only lied about it to Marcia, Sonia, Mia, and him, but she lied to James for her reasoning behind it. Or perhaps James made up a reason and covered up his side of the truth. Either way, somebody was lying and he itched to find out who obscured the truth from him, even though the damage had already been done between the two of them and Ashley had run into Kurt's arms. He set the papers down on the bed next to him before reaching to his left for his plate and the accompanying fork.  
“You have got to be kidding me!” he said in a hushed voice as he took the first bite. The meat, despite being a couple of days old, still tasted moist and with a small kick of spice on the inside. He took several more bites before he heard Sonia's voice down the hall. She was probably looking for him given it was past noon and he had already downed a glass of akvavit. She knocked on the door.  
“Lars? Are you in here?”  
“I am, yes.” He swallowed the bite of meat but in all truth, he swallowed down the feeling of nervousness inside of him. Sonia poked her head into the bedroom and he knitted his knees together as if to hide from her. She stuck the tip of her tongue into the corner of her mouth and eyed him with a raised eyebrow.  
“How'd you know I was here?”  
“I just—had a hunch.”  
“Come—Come in.” He gestured for her to enter the room, and she revealed her low cut grape colored blouse and black jeans. He set down the plate and lifted himself into an upright position there on the bed.  
“Look, Sonia, I can explain—”  
“Five hours, I was waiting for you.”  
“Hang on—you were actually in the room?”  
“Of course. Where else would I go? Marcia drove us up here and she's snogging Kirk right now as we speak back at the hotel. And Mom's all the way down in Los Angeles right now. I just had a hunch you were here because you've been here before.”  
Sonia shut the door behind her and neared the foot of the bed with her hands pressed to her hips.  
“You need me, Lars,” she told him in a husky voice.  
“No, I don't.”  
“Yes, you do. Your heart is still very much broken. I can feel it. Case in point, what the hell is that next to you?”  
He glanced down at the manuscript next to him there on the bed.  
“Just—light reading.”  
“Uh-huh, right. It's an unreleased press manuscript—something I've seen from school—and even upside down, I can see it has Ashley's name on it.”  
He chewed on his bottom lip. The meatloaf had all but vanished once it reached his stomach. He needed the truth for his best friend.  
“Ashley broke up with James for no reason,” he blurted out. Sonia fluttered her eyelashes at him.  
“What?”  
“Ashley broke up with James for no reason,” he repeated. “Ashley broke up with James for no reason. I can't believe it.”  
She cocked her head to the side before she set one knee on the edge of the bed right before his booted feet.  
“You actually believe that?” she asked him. He swallowed again, the nervous sensation in his stomach worsening as she set her other knee on the bed so she stood before him on her knees.  
“You actually believe that my best friend would lie about her having an affair with Kurt to break it off with James, even with all of her tears and all? You think she would lie about that?”  
He pulled his knees up to his chest but she threw herself down onto her hands and knees.  
“You really do need my help,” she growled, crawling towards him.  
“Don't you—have school to tend to?” he sputtered, realizing there was no way out from her.  
“It's my day off today,” she answered, taking off her blouse and showing him that lacy black brassiere once again. “I, like you, have all day, big boy. I've got all—fucking—day.”  
She returned to her hands and knees and crawled towards him, poking out her hips with each movement closer to him.  
“What are you—What are you doing?” he stammered, but there was no way out from her, especially since she loomed over him. She caressed the inner part of his throat and then his chest.  
“My mom was a stripper and a prostitute, Lars.” She held onto that top button there and unfastened it with her index finger and her thumb. She followed suit with each of the buttons. “She's Madame de la Garza. I know how to seduce and how to entice because of her.”  
She reached the bottom of his shirt and pushed the fabric off of his body.  
“I know you want it. And I know you want me. And I'm also going to get you to lose weight.”  
“What! No!”  
“Yes. Lose the chubbiness—lose this big belly—or you lose any possible opportunity with me.”  
He swallowed yet again as she picked up the plate of meatloaf and set it down on the foot of the bed. This extra weight helped him reconcile those old scars on his memory, and yet, she was such a source of comfort for him. He had no idea what to do right then other than watch Sonia undo his jeans and peel back the band of his underwear.  
“What do you say, piggy?” she asked him. He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. Instead, she leaned forward with her mouth open and suckled on his shaft. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he tilted his head back. That feeling. That blissful feeling of having a pair of lips around his length. She was giving herself to him and the very sensation of his head in the very back of her mouth.  
At the same time, the joke was on her because he had a serious belief that he gained weight from all of the acts of love making and drumming, and all of the food he put into his mouth acted as nothing more than a catalyst for him. But she was already there. He dared not look into her eyes once she lifted her head and stroked the tops of his thighs. She patted his bare belly and he yelped out in surprise.  
“Get rid of this for me,” she ordered. “Get rid of this and I'll give you exactly what you need to heal your broken heart, daddy.”  
Sonia climbed off of him and, taking her blouse with her, she climbed off of the bed. He lay there on his back, with his chest heaving and with his jeans undone and his genitals hanging out in the open until she left the room and then the house.  
Lars sat upright to find she had taken the plate of meatloaf with her as well. He pulled his underwear back on and clambered off of the bed to fix his jeans, and then picked up the manuscript and darted out of the room. He was alone in the house, again. Except this time Mia wasn't coming to spend a night with him. He set the manuscript on the couch before bursting out the front door to the bright daylight and the sun hanging high in the sky over his head. He recognized Jerry's truck at the far end of the block.  
“Jerry!” he shouted, waving his arms about as he dashed down the front lawn to the curb. The truck pulled forward and up to the curb.  
“Jerry! Jerry!” he shouted again, and lucky for him, Jerry had rolled down the window so he could better hear him. “You've got to help me, man!”  
“What's up? What's wrong?”  
“It's Sonia, man! She's crazy! You've got to get me away from her!”  
“Okay, get in! Get in!”  
Lars flung open the passenger side door and threw himself into the seat next to him. Jerry stepped on it and they bolted down the street.  
“She already sucked my dick, though,” Lars confessed.  
“She sucked your dick?”  
“Big time. Nice deep throat. It felt so good and fucking hell, I loved it, but it was such a weird experience, though.”  
“Wait, you enjoyed it?”  
“I did. But I wasn't—there—so to speak. I couldn't look at her in the eye while she did it.”  
“Why couldn't you look at her in the eye?”  
“I—I don't know. That's why it was weird. I enjoyed it but it just like—did not register with me.”  
“Huh. That explains why you're running from her.”  
“I think so. Maybe. I don't know. The whole fucking thing is just so weird and so bloody messed up… she also wants me to lose weight, too.”  
“What's wrong with that?”  
“I've grown accustomed to it. I was singlehandedly welcomed home to my body because of this weight. But I want her, though.”  
He noticed Jerry taking the next onramp to the freeway headed south.  
“Where are we going?”  
“Portland. I'm taking you someplace—momentarily, mind you. Jason told me about your tour schedule. But I'm taking you there for a bit to help clear your mind and then I'll take you right back to Sea Town before the show starts.”  
“Dude, no! She lives in Portland!”  
“It's a big city, though. She'll have to turn it upside down in order to find you.”  
“I hope so, because, truth be known—I don't have a clue what I want right now.”


	100. Chapter 100

The clock on the dashboard of Jerry's truck read a quarter to three by the time they crossed the bridge spanning the Columbia River. He took the first exit before the Rose Quarter, the one heading out to Mount Hood, and Lars squirmed in his seat because he remembered Multnomah was not too far from there. The sun glared through the passenger side window onto the rear view mirror and Lars lifted his hand to shield his eyes.  
“Go into the glove box,” said Jerry as he pulled through a green lit intersection; “there's a pair of sunglasses in there. I'll let you borrow them for today.”  
Lars opened the small rectangular door right before his knees and spotted a pair of round sunglasses with thick mirrored lenses, and put them on over his eyes as they rounded a park with thick, lush oak trees and dark green hedges, and the glare worsened from there.  
“When that guy broke into Sonia and Marcia's house back in December, Mark, Layne, and I came this way,” Jerry explained as they passed through a neighborhood of low houses with dark roofs and evergreen shrubs lining the sides. “We took the eastern side of the mountains, the road headed up to the Dalles and the Columbia River Gorge, and then we pretty much hung a left and went around Mount Hood. Talk about remote and whole lotta nothin', but it's surprisingly quick, though.”  
Soon they passed under a freeway and cleared the neighborhoods of eastern Portland, and they were met with a dense forest of evergreen trees lining the next bend in the river; within time, they beheld the view of Mount Hood, the foreboding, frigid snow capped summit with a slight curve at the top emerging from the cold cavernous earth.  
Jerry pulled over to the dirt shoulder on the side of the road.  
“Okay, let's just take it slow,” he started, switching off the engine and pulling the parking lever. He gave his hair a toss before rolling down his window to let the crisp damp air flow into the cab of the truck.  
Lars leaned the back of his head against the head of the seat and closed his eyes. He realized he had neglected to button up his shirt the whole three hours they were on the road, but he could care less right at that moment.  
“So just relax. We're out here all alone—as far as Sonia knows, you're still up in Seattle—”  
Jerry stopped in his tracks.  
“The hell? I've never seen that place before.”  
“Where?”  
Lars lifted his head and opened his eyes to see Jerry pointing out the windshield at the three story building nestled at an angle within the trees on the other side of the highway. It had no windows but a grated garage door on the side facing them. Lars lifted the sunglasses off of the bridge of his nose to take a better look at it, and then he peered before him at the dark green sign on the side of the road before them.  
“Guess I must've missed it the first time,” Jerry muttered to himself before turning to him. “I don't know how I managed to miss it, I mean it's totally wrong in an architectural stance. Wanna go check it out?”  
“If it takes my mind off girls, I don't see why not,” said Lars with a shrug; he never took his eyes off of the sign ahead. “'Bridge of the Gods'. Forty miles ahead.”  
“Bridge of the Gods?” Jerry chuckled.  
“Yeah, that's what it says! Bridge of the Gods!”  
“God, that's glorious!” He burst out laughing. “I guess I missed that, too.”  
And then he opened the door so as to climb out of the truck. Lars put his sunglasses back on before following suit on his side: the soles of his black boots crunched on the dirt and fallen pine needles on the ground with every step he took around the front of the truck. The cool breeze flowing down from the rich blue Columbia River kissed the plush skin on his exposed belly and sent a slight chill over his body back to his spine. He could feel a slight jiggle upon his waist with each step over the pavement.  
Perhaps Sonia was right. Perhaps he could lose a couple of pounds.  
But he was already out here with Jerry and they crossed the highway to the dirt driveway leading up to the three story building overlooking a narrowed stretch of the river. Lars lifted the sunglasses to take a better look at the towering evergreen pines on either side of the driveway: high over his head, on the right tree, he spotted a wooden sign reading “Arbeit Macht Frei.”  
“'Arbeit Macht Frei,'” he said aloud.  
“Hm?” Jerry asked him, and he pointed at the sign.  
“Up there.”  
Jerry tilted his head back to see the sign for himself. It took him a full minute before he could see it for himself, and then he, too, read it aloud.  
“Arbeit Macht Frei?”  
“I've seen that before,” Lars replied, bringing his head back down to ease the strain on his neck. “Just—where have I seen it—”  
Something caught his eye to his left and he ambled towards the garage door without finishing his thought. Once again, with every step came a gentle quiver from his waist. He stopped right there in the middle of the dirt, and turned so the breeze lapped at his back, and he clasped his hands to his bare belly. There lay that roll of fat upon his waist, right underneath the soft round curve making his whole belly but he swore that was all there was to it. He lifted his head right as Jerry approached him.  
“Jerry, I need to ask you something,” he started, sliding his hands underneath his shirt to feel his love handles.  
“Okay.”  
“I've noticed every step I take, I jiggle.”  
“What do you mean, you jiggle?”  
“I jiggle, like my gut bounces a little bit. Sonia wants me to lose weight after all.”  
“Well, do you?”  
He paused.  
“Not—really.”  
“Then don't. Anyways, what'd you see over here?”  
Lars pointed to the corner of the building before him, the one closest to them.  
“I saw—something glimmering over here.” He led Jerry to the corner to a series of metal trash cans lining the outside wall. A clear plastic sack filled with dark rounded objects lay on the ground before his booted feet.  
“What's that?” asked Jerry.  
“No idea. Looks like muffin stumps. I am the one with the muffin top after all—”  
Lars turned his head at the second can to their right, the one with no lid and therefore exposing—  
“Pink donut box.”  
He peered back at Jerry with his mouth agape and then stepped forward to the can to examine it closer: all the while, he buttoned up his shirt to protect from the cool river air which left the skin on his torso feeling a bit numb. Lars need not take off his sunglasses to recognize that phone number there on the side of the box, the same from the day Mia suffered the blow to her head in Pike Place Market…  
“It's from Smell the Magic—”  
“Can I help you boys?” a voice in front of them caught them both off guard; Lars may as well have thrown the box back into the can. He turned to his left to see the older man with a cane in one hand and a black sack of garbage in the other. He noticed the bandage and line of gauze on the right side of his face. He seemed familiar to him, too. It took Lars a moment to recognize him. He swallowed at the sight of him but the sunglasses protected his eyes and from the true expression upon his face. He thought of what to say right then, but he felt his throat close up, especially once he remembered what Mia had said to him the night they broke up.  
“We were just—driving through,” Jerry picked up Lars' startled thoughts, “and—we were wondering—where the door is on this place. What is this place?”  
“This place? It's an ice cream warehouse. There's only two doors here—the big one around the corner and the one back here—” He nodded behind him and Lars spotted the heavy door hanging ajar by a few centimeters at the end of the trash cans. The man dropped the garbage into the trash can closest to him and flashed Lars a sneer. He swallowed again as he spotted what appeared to be the head of a golf club jutting out from underneath the lid of the can. Meanwhile, he had no idea if he could recognize him from behind those mirrored glasses. But he could feel him staring right into his soul, even with that layer of concave glass protecting him. He struggled to keep his expression straight despite the hammering heart beat inside of his chest.  
“You fellas aren't from around here, are you?”  
“No, I'm from Seattle,” Jerry replied at a rapid pace, “he's from the Bay Area.”  
“Should'a known. A couple of queer punks out in the sticks trying to spread their word into the farthest corners of the world.”  
“Queer punks? The hell you talking about?” Jerry demanded.  
“Long haired pretty boys dressed like they just came from that chic armpits of the city. Don't think I don't know your type—” A low rumble emerged from the crack in the door behind him and shook the outside wall so hard that the trash cans in turn clanked in response. Lars figured that must have been the air conditioner, given the door was standing open and the man had been out here long enough to for it to shudder into gear.  
He flashed him another sneer before turning away from the cans.  
“Get out of here, both of you. We're closed to the public.”  
Lars relaxed the muscles in his belly and his hips as the man turned and limped back to the door. He watched him step back inside before he opened his mouth.  
“Take it easy,” he murmured before letting out a long low whistle and turning back to Jerry. “Man, that was close.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“That was the bastard who hit me in the head at the Mother Love Bone show the other night.”  
“He hit you in the head?”  
“Yeah, and then he tried to do it harder. Mia and I were moshing near the front and I just so happened to turn around at the right time before he pelted me right in the head with that cane of his a second time.”  
“What stopped him?”  
“Threw hot tea in his face. It was a good thing I did that because he probably would've knocked me out.”  
“Wow. Did he do any damage to you otherwise?”  
“No. Hurt like holy fuck, but he did no harm to me other than that.”  
Jerry turned his head to examine the thirty foot high outside wall over their heads. Not a single glimmer one, not a single sign of anything that could provide them with a sign of business, or life itself. He led Lars away from there and they crunched across the dirt to the mouth of the driveway and then the highway. Lars' boots sounded like the hooves of a horse over the top of the pavement as they returned to the truck parked on the side of the road. Jerry climbed into the driver's seat and Lars returned to the passenger side seat: he took off his sunglasses right as a stray cloud covered the sun.  
“I've got a bad feeling about this, Lars,” Jerry confessed, looking out the window at the warehouse.  
“I have a terrible feeling about this, too. Let's get the hell out of here.”  
“Get something to eat?”  
“Again, if it takes my mind off of girls, I don't see why not.”  
Jerry started up the truck and they fastened their seat belts before turning back around on the two lane road back to Portland. The sun loomed in the windshield, but Lars didn't mind it given he never took off the sunglasses.  
“So where do you want to go?” Jerry asked him once they reached the overpass again.  
“There was this lovely Chinese place Mia and I went to once, but we would have to pass by Marcia and Sonia's house on the way there.”  
Jerry turned to him at that moment with his eyebrows raised and a befuddled look upon his face.  
“They're not home, you know,” he pointed out. “They're up north.”  
“I know, it is just—” He moved his head from side to side. “—it's Marcia and Sonia's house. There's a lot of feelings rooted there.”  
Soon they reached Multnomah Boulevard, and the side street leading to the Bennetts' house. It was a brief glimpse into the neighborhood, but he could still see the scene from that afternoon following the trip up the Oregon Coast.  
Lars wondered if the sisters ever fixed the broken doorknob and the broken window as they pressed on into town and to the restaurant for an early dinner.


	101. Chapter 101

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Clowns to the left of me,  
> jokers to the right, here I am,  
> stuck in the middle with you.”  
> -”Stuck in the Middle with You”, Stealers Wheel  
> “Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?”

“I am in the restaurant Mia and I went out to dinner at that time. Kirk took Marcia and Sonia here. It's almost surreal being here right now, sitting here at one of the tables with Jerry across from me and not her.”

“Noodles and a thing of beer? The breakfast of champions.”

“I mean—I like Sonia. I do like her. And I appreciate what she's trying to do for me in Mia's wake, but God—it's just so damn crazy! It's so fucking crazy! It's almost like she got inside of my dick and the rest of my body without my mind knowing about it. It's as if the Øresund bridge between my mind and my body has collapsed, or is at least closed for business for the time being. I need a rain check.”

“Holy shit, these noodles are too bloody good. Smooth, silky, flavor is subtle. No shortage of heat, though—fock, my tongue!”

“Pot stickers are good, too. Nice and crispy—fresh vegetables and pork on the inside. And the soy sauce is perfect! Last time, it was a bit too salty, but I see they dialed it back a bit.”

“Alright, Jerry. I will be waiting right here for you.”

“Anyways, as I was saying, I do like Sonia. I feel her energy like how I felt Mia's energy. But there is something else there. Perhaps it was because she hung out with Kirk? Who knows.  
“Speaking of which, I just noticed she has never confessed to me if she broke up with Kirk or not. I hope she did. If Mia using me as a gateway from her marriage left me feeling totally weird, I simply cannot imagine doing that. I already did that with Dave's girlfriend—I am not doing that again. No. Not with Kirk.  
“God—an affair. The very sound of the word makes me feel as though I am wandering straight into no-man's land. Two people form a union with one another and the one of them seeks out the company of a third party. I am the third party. I was stuck in the middle between Mia and Doorknob. And according to her, he wants to kill me, especially now.  
“The thing is… I don't know how I should feel about that. I don't know if I should feel terrified or… flattered. I am terrified of this man—I am assuming he is very big, his pants nearly swallowed me whole. And I have no doubt he will crush me like a bug if the opportunity arises. And yet, I feel flattered. I am flattered by this and it is inexplicable.  
“But on the other hand—since she lied to me about… well, everything, I have no idea if she is even telling the truth about all of this. I mean, she faked her death for fuck's sake. She faked her death. She faked her death so she could be with me. I have no idea how I should feel about that."

“Yes?  
“Oh, I remember you now. Jen. Jen? Yes! You and Mia know each other.  
“Oh, really?  
“Oh? Well, how am I supposed to believe you then? Mia had lied to me about everything imaginable. What makes you think I will believe you? And—is everything alright? You—You—Don't take this the wrong way but you look like death warmed you up.  
“Yes, the skin upon your face is completely pallid and I can see your eyes turning yellow. Have you seen a doctor lately? Or looked in the mirror?  
“She told you to keep me and her under wraps. Mind you, I don't have any idea what to believe right now—”

“And—why are you telling me this? Mia and I—my lips are dry.  
“Mia and I broke up. Yes. She told me the truth and I took it—poorly, to say in the least.  
“I don't know. I don't know how I feel about any of it, from what I did to what's going on between Sonia and me—I have no idea how to feel about any of this.  
“Under the name Lacey Roquelaure, I assume?  
“Okay, well—we are going to be in Idaho and Montana then so I cannot make that show if I wanted to.”

“Hang on—do you know Olivia Starr at all?  
“You do! Good. Well, since it is nearly summer and all, is it possible you could convince her and Ashley to attend it for me? Please, please do not give the full reason, though, lest Mia know I am trying to snoop on her. That's the last thing I want to do, but know that I would very love going to that show. If not for Mia, then for the baked goods.  
“Yes, heh. I do love to eat, yes. In fact, Mia helped me tap into that part of me. Not a moment goes by where I am thinking about how—erotic, I should say? How erotic and lovely it is to fill myself with such gorgeous, decadent food. I always have loved that feeling—I grew up on a series of islands in Northern Europe, after all. And she just—she helped me uncover my own true desires and the feeling in my flesh. I always have felt very sensual and very much in touch with myself but it is because of her I feel it more. I feel it more deeply, you know?  
“I don't know. I am not sure if I can make that assumption, but—truth be known, and don't tell anyone this for me, please. You are resident secret holder after all. More of a secret keeper than I am, and I will take secrets to my own demise if I must.  
“Truth be known, as I am sitting here at this table, and with these lovely noodles and pot stickers and rice with those little Asian hot chili peppers mixed in, I can't help but miss her. I look at those pieces of chili pepper in the rice and I feel my face growing warm, even without taking a bite. She would feed me chorizo and it would make my face flush. I could feel it in my stomach and in my heart, too. I remember her calling the Puerto Rican chorizo the most sensual of those meats. That was one of the things that made me feel closer to her.  
“That is the feeling inside the flesh, but—this is going to sound weird but—my mind is meandering in another direction. And if you must pry, her best friend Sonia is currently chasing my ass.  
“Why? I have no idea. I think it is because she feels she can fix me and the breaks on my heart in Mia's wake. But I do not think she can because she isn't the one with the glue.  
“Don't take that the wrong way, though. I like Sonia—she is very sexy and hot, and she helps me relax and get in touch with my desires in a similar vein as Mia. She is very kind, too. But she looks at me with this almost psycho killer look and it frightens me as much as it does arouse me.  
“Yeah, and that's what's so weird about it, too. She scares me but she also gives me a boner of monolithic proportions. She's like the personification of erotic asphyxiation.”

“Well, I think all humans are beautiful. I think the two sexes both have their perks as well as their drawbacks. Everyone who needs love needs a kiss in my eye.”

“Shit, here comes Jerry. Not a word of this to anyone, okay? Alright, now—go see a doctor or something. I mean that in the best way, too.”

“Yes, try the rice—it is phenomenal.”

“I am just going to eat until I can't. All of these noodles, all of these pot stickers, all of this rice, all of these vegetables…”

“My belly is lonely. I think I ate more than the first time I came here and yet, I am lonely. I could ask Jerry for a bit of sleight of hand but I have no idea how he would feel about it. I have only known the guy for a bit, too. It was one thing with Mia.”

“Hang on—hang on—hang on—hang on—  
“GAH! Pressure's off a bit now, too. Good thing we're outside, he he he he.”

“Funny how I eat more than my stomach can tolerate and yet I can still think coherently. When I ate that whole red velvet cake back around Thanksgiving, I could scarcely keep my eyes open. Tolerance, perhaps?”

“Oh, hello, Layne.”

“What!  
“NO!  
“SHE DIDN'T!”

“I—I can't believe it.”

“Let's just stay down here in Portland for the night, Jerry. I don't even want to be near Seattle right now.  
“Yes, I know there is no relationship tie there but—  
“I feel ill. Not ill enough to barf up everything I ate back there, but more like my poor stomach could use about a thousand belly rubs to ease the pain.”

“Layne's camping out by the lake? Yeah, sure. The coast is a bit far and—you know.”

“Portland is quite lovely. I like how it's low slung and there is no rush to go anywhere here. It's not like Los Angeles or the Bay Area. It is lacking that expanse that Seattle has, and I have no idea about the music scene here. It is a possibility—where there is a great deal of civility, there is bound to be the arts, especially music.”

“I can't believe she did that. I just—fuck. Moreover, my feelings are—scattered beyond recognition.”

“Screw feelings, I got my dick and my hand.”

“I don't even know what to say right now, other than it's fucking beautiful over here. This is a sweet little town. Reminds me of Gentofte a bit. Perhaps I can get my parents to move up here—they would love it here. It's quiet and there's the lake!”

“What the—ah, shit.  
“What a time to run out of fuel. In the woods. Again. And Layne has all but disappeared ahead of us. He was going at like a thousand miles an hour, anyways.”

“What time is it? Half past five? Already?! Bloody hell.”

“Not even a guard rail. Trees all around us. There is a hill and a camp ground, and the nearest house was about five miles back, too. And I can see those clouds coming in from the north. And it's going to be dark soon. And Layne has gone—that way.  
“Well—at least my belly's full of food. I am going to feel warm tonight underneath that spare blanket. But I am not going to sleep well in this front seat. The feeling is not sensual and tender anymore. Now it is a matter of sleeping out in the woods.  
“I am missing another hand. A soft hand. Not my own. My dick can take it, but not my belly—the skin is too soft and delicate.”

“Does Layne even know what happened to us?”

“Jerry is out there building a campfire, but I don't feel like going out there to be near it, especially since we don't have marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers. I am just—going to lie here with the seat reclined back. I am going to lie here under this heavy horse blanket with my heavy body and the even heavier black hole in my heart. I could touch myself, but I have no idea if I will enjoy it. My mind is gone and my body is in pain, and not the kind of pain I feel when I drum too hard without eating a great deal before then.”

“I got stuck in the middle of two people. Everyone has someone and whomever I end up with ends up running into someone else's arms. No love for Lars. No love for the Dane.”

“Well—at least this blanket welcomes me. I love this blanket. The feeling around me is lovely and comforting and sweet, but it's a blanket. It's not another human. It's not my mother. It's not Sonia. And it's definitely not Mia.”

“I cannot believe she did that. Why would she even do—”

“If I wake up tomorrow and my head is soaking wet, I hope I fall right back to sleep.”


	102. Chapter 102

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written some pretty raw scenes before in my original writing (and here), but this by far takes the cake (pardon the pun)

“Waking up—and it's dark out. Am I dead? Or am I dreaming?  
“I am hungry and I have no idea where Jerry ran off to. I have not a clue where Layne went, either. I am alone in the woods. I am alone in the woods, five miles from the nearest house and for all I know, no one is home.  
“Fuck—somebody kill me.  
“I'm a kinky little boy. Kill me.”

“My tummy hurts. It's as if I was punched right in the belly several times while I was sleeping.”

“My feet are warm, my nose is cold, my head is DRY! There is no leak in this truck. And my tummy hurts, that dull, gnawing discomfort.  
“I need a rub. A nice tender hearted rub right on my skin. I need the feel of those small dainty feminine hands on my belly to soothe me. Must be something I ate. God, I hope it's not.”

“What is that sound—rain? That would be rain, yes. Pour over me. Shower over me and let me wander throughout these woods alone. I am about to walk this path alone, I might as well feel the company of the rain over my head and shoulders.”

“And where the hell is Jerry? Did he set up camp without me or did Layne show up and do it somewhere else while I was sleeping? I am here in this truck all alone and all I have protecting me from the cold in here is this blanket. I just have these split jeans and my button down shirt, and those mirrored sunglasses Jerry let me borrow earlier. I have no jacket. I have no means of contact with the outside world. I have nothing.  
“Christ Almighty, I feel so sick. Aside from this feeling in my stomach, my head is absolutely pounding right now. Every pound of my heart feels like a sledge hammer hitting a railroad spike right into my head.”

“Where are the keys?  
“There are the keys. I see Jerry never took them out of the ignition.  
“Let's see—a quarter to four in the morning? Fucking hell, I've been asleep for almost twelve hours?  
“I need to get my ass back to Seattle. Play time is over after all. Then again, I don't know where Jerry is and this is his truck. But I need to go back to the hotel. I really hope Sonia is not there otherwise I might—I just might ask her to leave. I mean, that is my room after all. Management paid for it and I can go to the front desk and ask for a key—she does not have that right. If she breaks in there, she is a bad girl and I more than likely will not have to see her again.  
“But God dammit, she is so sexy, though. I want her. My body wants her. Fuck.”

“Another thing driving me insane is the whole thing with James and Ashley. I can't make that conclusion. I can't make of anything from any of that! I just want answers. I just want to know what drove them apart. I doubt Kurt himself would do coax such things out of her. All I want is a straight answer shoved into my face in writing. All I want is writing. Just writing!”

“This pain in my belly escaped from my heart. I have no doubt about that in my mind. My mind disconnected from my body. Sweden disconnected from Denmark.”

“And my hands are still dry and rough. So dry and rough in fact that I do not think I can touch myself under the belt with them. I know for a fact Jerry has no lotion. But perhaps rain water can fix that?”

“Careful—careful—don't want too much—ah, there we are. Close the window, close the window… it is not lotion but it will do the trick. All over my hands, all down my wrists…”

“Okay—I am sort of dry. A little more, a little more… there we go. Okay. Back under the blanket. Unbutton it there—  
“This is actually not bad. I would much prefer if it was another person doing the massaging for me.  
“Something about… touching my own hip bones, and the thought of wearing my jeans so low that they hug them. Oh—those little kisses there Mia used to give me! If only I could kiss myself there. All I can do is press my fingers to my lips and then lay them there. But it is not the same. It is not the same feeling as having a pair of soft lips upon my skin and the curvature of the bone.”

“Oh—the beautiful fat around my waist. Such soft flesh. Such soft, silken flesh christened by the kiss of a woman. I think it's funny that I am still considered slim and fit and yet I have all of this weight on my body. Most of it went to my chest, my shoulders, my hips, and my thighs, and I got this little left over on my middle. I am weird.  
“I want to go back to those couple of weeks before Valentine's Day where I was alone in my house and I was taking Polaroids of myself. I just want to do that again. I want to be able to look at myself and see a beautiful guy again.”

“I want to love my body again. Why can't I love my body again?”

“—waking up from dozing off. I think I know. It was Sonia. She taught me to off set my mind and my body so as to mix me up like a tossed salad. Telling me to focus on her and forget about everything in my current state of mind, bah! But then again it was my fault. I was laying there in the window seat with my gullet stuffed like a turkey and my everything on display for her. I should have known her intentions. I should have known that all she wanted was to get into my jeans. This is so ron, I mean, wrong. This all feels so very wrong.  
“On that thought, all of this is my fault. Had I not walked into Smell the Magic that day I met Mia, none of this would have happened. I never would have met her and I never would have met Sonia. Had I not walked into Smell the Magic that morning and learned to control my hunger, none of this would have happened to me, and I would not be laying here all alone on this seat in Jerry's truck out by Lake Oswego and with my hands on my gut like I am kneading a ball of dough. I put my hands up by my head because my head is in agony…”

“But fuck, I want Sonia so much. I want her even in all of her filth and all of her dirtiness. I want her. I want to feel her. I want to feel the filth that runs through her and feel it on my tongue. I want her sugar in my tea. I almost can't even control it—”

“God, somebody TOUCH ME! Somebody touch me and feel me and kiss me and have sex with me and love me! Somebody come into this truck and LOVE ME! LOVE ME! LOVE! ME!”

“I am just a boy. I am not a man. I am a twenty three year old BOY. I'm not even a boy—I'm a boy toy. Look at me, look at me. Look at me, pull my strings, wind me up, and watch me spin. One hundred and seventy nine pounds of nasty, starved, kinky boy toy. I have a fat face and a fat belly and I don't have a soul to love me—only to play with me and leave me feeling used up. I am ugly. Don't look at me—I am ugly and will fuck you up more than losing Cliff in the bus crash. The only women who have ever loved me were my mother, my grandmother, and Mia. She loved me. She loved me and look what she did to me! Fattening me up and telling me all manner of lies and then—and then, and then, and then, and then! She loved me, went to Seattle, and did—did—fucking—THAT! I can't BELIEVE she would convince Sonia to have an affair with me and then the two of them both have a go with Ben Shepherd right after he gets married tomorrow afternoon—oh God, I feel so sick just thinking about it. GOD DAMMIT, MIA, MOTHER FUCKING WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME AND THEN TO HIM!”

“I am crying. Actual tears. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!”

“I want Sonia. I want Mia. I want both of them. I want to die. I want to just lay here and curl up and DIE!”

“I don't even know if I am even going to be at that show now. The baking show, I mean. Shit, I don't even feel like drumming tomorrow night. Or tonight. When the fock ever it is. I feel like sinking into this fucking car seat.  
“I really hope Jerry and Layne are not nearby. I do not want to be seen. I do not want to be seen like this. I am a mess. I am a focking MESS!  
“Oh my fucking God, my stomach. My stomach. My poor bloated stomach. My hands, they do nothing. Why did I let this happen. Why. Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why. Fuck me, fuck me. Fuck my ass. Fuck my balls. Fuck my stomach. Why—”

“I will just lay here… hold me, blanket friend. Please, hold me. Hold me and don't ever let me go.”

“Going under and crying myself back to sleep now—good bye. Nobody look at me.”


	103. Chapter 103

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I can't help but to hear an exchanging of words  
> ‘What a beautiful wedding!  
> What a beautiful wedding,’ says a bridesmaid to a waiter.  
> ‘And, yes, but what a shame,  
> what a shame the poor groom's bride is a whore.”  
> -”I Write Sins Not Tragedies”, Panic! at the Disco

The blanket covered Lars' head and arms out to his elbows, but someone slipping into the front seat for the truck could see his hands hanging out from the edge of the heavy fabric. Such was the case this morning: Lars awoke to Jerry tapping the palms of his hands with the pads of his fingers. He curled his fingers back to the base of his palm so as to make a fist but he had very little strength at the moment. He was too exhausted from the crying and from over thinking it all.  
He opened his eyes to see the ray of light flooding into his safe place from around his wrists and his hands. He had hoped to pass in his sleep but something kept his heart beating inside of his chest. Something kept him alive.  
He groaned inside of his throat as Jerry gave him another tap on the palm and then he jerked his left hand back towards him. Lars peeled off the part of the blanket covering the top of his head and snapped his eyes shut to protect from the incoming sunlight.  
“Are you awake? It's almost eight thirty. Layne and I met one of the campers nearby and he gave us some fuel last night. Layne himself on the other hand, is going to buy us breakfast.”  
Lars rubbed his eyes before laying his head back down on the back of the seat. Amazing to him, he did not feel like eating anything, but rather lay there with nothing more than the blanket. The inside of the truck was cool, but not cold: either way Lars felt cold. The blood flowed throughout his body and yet his skin shared the consistency of cold porcelain. Jerry eyed him with his eyebrows knitted together.  
“Are you alright?”  
He swallowed, but never responded.  
“Lars? Are you okay?”  
He fluttered his eyelashes to hold back the tears.  
“Are you alright?” Jerry repeated in a low voice.  
“Let's just—” Lars parted his lips and his voice emerged out of his parched, dry mouth in the form of a broken whisper. Jerry leaned his head closer to him to better hear his words; he swallowed again and closed his eyes.  
“Let's just—get the fuck out of here.”  
Jerry lifted his head and tossed his blond hair back with a flick of his head before holding onto the ignition key and giving it a turn. The truck roared to life and Lars tugged the blanket over his head to envelope himself in the comfort of the shadows once again: the sunlight shone through the miniscule holes in the fabric. He lay there on his side with the seat reclined back; all he could do was feel the truck turning around and swaying about the pavement. He could hardly think of anything other than what Mia and Sonia had been doing as of late. Ben was to marry that afternoon, mere hours before their show, and Sonia planned on getting in between him and his new bride, and all the while, Lars had no idea if she meant everything she bestowed onto him. Indeed, he had no idea if she was still with Kirk. For all Lars knew, she cheated on Kirk with him and prepared to cheat on him with Ben.  
It was the ultimate triangle and he had fallen right into the corner, right in the line of sight of the eight ball.  
A caving feeling inside of his stomach emerged to signify the emptiness within; a quiet grumble followed, but he didn't feel like eating. He had no desire to drink anything, despite the dry feeling inside of his throat.  
He felt the truck turn a corner and almost slid forward onto the center console between him and Jerry. He caught himself in the pivot of the seat.  
Despite having not eaten anything since their dining at the restaurant, Lars' body felt heavy and dense: as if he had lay out in the rain all night and all of the softness and sweetness upon him had logged full of rain water.  
He then flashed on the memory of Jen, and her skin as yellow as the sunlight outside of the blanket. Her words echoed throughout his mind and yet he had no idea what to think of them, that is if he could think about them at all.  
“You still awake?” asked Jerry as the truck rolled up to a stoplight.  
“Yeah,” he croaked from underneath the blanket.  
“Okay—just wanted to tell you that we're coming up to this little diner here by the water. The guy told us this place is cheap-o and they've got—pandekager, he called it?”  
Lars pushed off the blanket from his head and face once again: the sunlight flooded through the windshield before him and shone over the crown of his head, and yet he still squinted from the brightness of it. He twisted his neck and gazed up at the top of the windshield to see a fluffy splotch of a rain cloud looming low from the sky. He returned his gaze to the driver's side windows and spotted several more dark gray clouds banking around the hillsides of Lake Oswego and of course, Portland. He could sense they were not entirely out of the rain as of yet.  
“Pandekager?” he repeated aloud.  
“Yeah. I figured that would get you out of your rabbit hole—he said it was Scandinavian and Layne and I immediately thought of you.”  
The light turned green and they rolled forward for some length before turning into a driveway on Lars' side. Jerry slowed down right as another cloud covered up the morning sun, thus shrouding the small town encompassing a lake in shadow: he took a space and then switched off the engine. Lars lifted himself off of the reclined seat to take a better look at the diner and the warm lights dotting the interior edges of the front bay windows.  
And just like that, he was hungry: the caving sensation inside of his stomach and the accompanying growl giving way to a wave of nausea, like the kind of nausea associated with riding in a moving vehicle.  
Lars ran his fingers through his hair before picking the blanket off of his body and attempting to wad it up.  
“Just chuck it in the back,” Jerry advised him, and he tossed it into the back seat before they climbed out to the cool, crisp morning. The soles of Lars' boots clanked onto the pavement and the weight of his body tugged him down from the cab of the truck. His neck felt stiff, like a hard metal pipe without a kink in one side; his back ached from laying in such a bizarre position on the seat. He groaned inside of his throat as he pushed his chest forward to stretch his back and his shoulders; he then turned around to shut the passenger side door with his hip.  
Layne, meanwhile, had parked on the other side of the truck; the three of them huddled into the diner and took the second table from the door.  
Lars licked his lips and gave both of his eyes another rub. He asked the waitress for a glass of water and a cup of coffee.  
“What a strange day today,” he remarked aloud, “I am drinking coffee in lieu of tea.”  
“Very strange indeed,” said Layne with a brief smirk upon his face.  
“I kind of wanna be one of those guys who carries a shit load of stuff in my pockets,” Lars continued, running his fingers through his hair once again. “You know—have pens and bags of tea and things in my pants pockets. You know—you never know when you might need such things upon running into a jam of some sort.”  
Layne chuckled at that, while Jerry fixed his hair and then peered out the window at the clouds trying to collect once more around the lake. And then the smirk on Layne's face faded into an expression of slight concern. Lars flicked his bangs out of his eyes and he knew what he came here for.  
“So may I ask—how—” he began, leaning back in the seat with one eye squinted shut from a momentary glare of bright sunlight on the windshields outside of the window. “—how—you found out about Mia, and Sonia, and Ben?”  
“Who, me?” asked Layne.  
“Yes.”  
He took a glimpse over at Jerry before returning to Lars with his arms folded over the top of the table.  
“Okay. I'm just going to—well try to, anyways. I'll try to keep this in brief. Sonia has been coming to me for little bags of pot since Christmas—you know, the kind that I let you, Chris, and Dave smoke that one time at the baking show. Remember that?”  
“The shit that made me incredibly paranoid of strawberries and cacti, and caused me to hallucinate for days on end? Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.”  
“Anyways, she and I went over to Bainbridge Island one day back in—March, I think it was. I remember she didn't have school, so she could come up from Portland by herself. I don't know if she told Mia about it, but we took the ferry over because she wanted to show me that cabin you all stayed at over Thanksgiving. She told me and my girlfriend that we might want to stay there for a weekend. You know, get away from the mainland for a bit.”  
“Right, right.”  
“Anyways, we get over there and that's how we found Ben and his fiancee and their stash of that nasty ass weed that causes night terrors. His fiancee, whom he proposed to on New Year's Eve. I guess they were high school sweet hearts, like they met in junior year and have been in love since then. They graduated together last spring—the both of them still seventeen, can you believe that? Anyway, she takes Sonia and me back to their garden with the pot plants and the San Pedro cacti underneath an awning—it was like a green house right there on his fiancee's property. Yeah, it belonged to her. Ben just so happened to be there because they're engaged and they're getting married this afternoon. Ben helped Jerry find Mia that one time at Pike Place Market, and so he knew me and he remembered Sonia, and that was how we were able to get a hold of it.”  
Layne stopped for a second for the waitress to take their orders: Lars of course asked for pandekager with powdered sugar and blueberries, while Layne and Jerry both asked for omelettes with bacon and toast. Once she stepped away, and the clash of one of the bus boys dropping plates on the kitchen floor in the next room over instilled a wave of brief but sudden silence over the diner, he proceeded with his story.  
“Anyways—I'm using Sonia's words here, but according to her, Ben approached her at one point when the two of us were at the house. He told her something like… during the Thanksgiving party, he kept his eye on her the whole entire time they were there and he was kind of attracted to her. He never said anything because—you know, he's engaged. That other chick's going to be his wife in a matter of hours as of right now so he can't really speak about that sort of thing.”  
“Right, right.”  
“So she tells Ben that she kind of liked him and at that point, she was unsure about herself and Kirk because I guess he's been getting a little too cozy with her sister—what's her name again?”  
“Marcia,” replied Jerry before he took a sip of coffee.  
“Marcia! That was it! So yeah, she walked out of the house one night—well, I shouldn't say 'walked'…”  
“The broken doorknob,” Lars recalled.  
“Nah, it wasn't the doorknob. She got locked in the basement trying to find clean towels and the only way she could get out was through a broken window and a little step ladder down there. But she gets out and then she runs over to Ashley's place—I guess she was running for class—but she goes over there to get a hold of me. When she got a moment at school, she asked me for Ben's number. I give it to her under the condition that she treads carefully. She vows to and I guess they found the opportunities to do so.”  
“But what's Mia got to do with it, though?” asked Jerry.  
“After Mia and Lars split, she asked Sonia to—assist him.”  
“Assist him?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Soften the blow of things,” Lars filled in, all while saying it almost under his breath.  
“Yeah, and meanwhile, Sonia has had obligations with Ben on top of it all. He's been calling her on her breaks at school and they've been having phone sex with each other, often in a clandestine manner. I don't know how they do it without Ben's fiancee or Kirk finding out but they managed to find a way for it to fall on deaf ears. She told me because I promised to keep it a secret, but she noticed you weren't back at the hotel last night so she told me to tell you face to face.”  
Lars sighed through his nose as his gaze dropped to the top of the table.  
“Recently, Ben hit her up for a little more than a get together, and to do it on his eve of his honeymoon all the while. He's faking illness right now so they agreed to postpone the honeymoon until next week. Another role that Mia plays is messenger: when she gets a day off, she comes up here with—kinda sexy love letters from Sonia. Love letters that, coincidentally, Mia taught her to write to Ben. She comes up here and Ben usually invents a story of some sort to grant him an excuse to take the ferry back to the mainland. He stashes her letters in—a lock box, I think is what Sonia called it. He puts it in a lock box in the trunk of his car.”  
Layne ran his fingers through the hair on the crown of his head while giving Lars a thoughtful look.  
“I just wonder how you're taking the whole thing, though, Lars,” he confessed in a soft voice.  
“Well, on one hand—truth be known, I am attracted to Sonia.”  
“Are you really?” asked Jerry, taking another sip of his coffee.  
“I am, yes.” Lars picked up his water glass and took a large drink, the cold water covering his dry throat. He almost downed half of the glass right there, but decided to save it for later on in their breakfast. He set the glass down on the table and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.  
“I do like Sonia. She is very sexy.” His expression changed to one of seriousness. “But hearing all of this—I just—I don't know what to say right now.”  
“What about Mia?” questioned Layne, picking up his water glass.  
“Other than the obvious same thing, I have nothing to say about her, either. And other than—I feel like these two women used me, and Mia is guilty as charged especially with that one. I gained almost forty pounds because of her—” Layne almost gagged on an ice cube when he said that.  
“Forty pounds, are you crazy?” Jerry demanded in a hushed voice.  
“Just a little bit,” Lars replied with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “I know, aside from my face looking a little bit fuller and carrying this little pork belly on me, I don't even look it.”  
“Explains why you've been so hella good lately, though, Jesus Christ,” Jerry pointed out. Lars realized he was right about that, especially once their food arrived: the stack of pandekager consisted of several paper thin pancakes, like the halfway point between pancakes and crepes, with a light crisp along the edges and a knob of butter and a dusting of powdered sugar on top, and a small white china bowl of blueberries off to the side. And then, as the funk of the early morning faded with the incoming sunlight, he felt hungry again as he dripped some of the berries on the top of the stack.  
He was still in disbelief that Sonia and Ben both participated and consented to an affair with each other. But perhaps that was why he felt so torn about the affair between himself and Mia: she never told him about it, or the fact she was married to a man who wanted to kill him. He had no idea about Ben's fiancee or if she was willing to go to such drastic measures to bring back her spouse, and his skin crawled at the very thought of it. But on the other hand, he wanted Sonia. She helped him feel again following the break up. She never fixed him, but she did give him some much needed pleasure following the onslaught of pain at the time.  
He had an idea to sneak into the wedding to grab a hold of Sonia before she went too far. If he did that, Ben would cease committing any more infidelity, and he would be a hero who got the girl at the end!  
“Just out of curiosity, when is Ben's wedding?” Lars asked Layne.  
“When? I have no idea. Sonia never found out. All I know is it's this afternoon—she never found out if Ben meant at one or five.”  
Dammit! On top that very fact, he had to be at the venue for rehearsal by four thirty, which meant more than likely, he would miss the wedding. Lars slumped his shoulders and sighed through his nose as he continued into his stack of light and fluffy pandekager. He was quite hungry, finishing everything on his plate before him and then downing his coffee in time. The cavernous feeling inside of his stomach had disappeared, but the emptiness inside of him persisted. If anything, it ate at him more than any hungry feeling emanating from his body. He needed to track down Sonia before she wrecked a brand new family before it even left the gate.  
He never found out the time until Layne paid for their breakfast and left a generous tip for the waitress, and he and Jerry climbed back into the truck.  
“It's nearly eleven, seriously?” he asked aloud, reaching for his seat belt.  
“Yeah, it was like a quarter to nine when I woke you up,” Jerry replied, taking his keys out of his coat pocket. “Layne and I were kind of freaking out because you fell asleep there in the seat at five thirty and then you didn't wake up at all when we were looking around for each other. You still didn't wake up when we were trying to set up camp with what he had with him. He said you were probably just really tried so he told me to just let you sleep.”  
“I was, too. I didn't sleep at all the other night.”  
Jerry started up the truck and the two of them followed Layne out of Lake Oswego and on the ten mile stretch of road back into Portland. Lars remained silent the whole three and a half hours back up to Seattle, with one button on his shirt undone, his mirrored sunglasses over his face, and a feeling of being on a mission within mind, although he knew that was impossible. He had no clue about the time of the wedding, and add to this, even if he could make it back to Seattle before three o'clock, he would have to make the ferry over to Bainbridge and that took an hour at least. It was one thing with Mia sustaining the blow to her head at Pike Place because it took place so close to the venue and the hotel: he would miss his show to pull Sonia aside.  
Within time, Jerry drove Lars to the theater in downtown Seattle, about half a block from the hotel. Kirk strode over the sidewalk in the back alley towards the back door when they rolled up right on time. He wore a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and matching trousers, and a bright white neck tie around his neck. Lars climbed out of the truck to greet him, albeit with confusion at the sight of the combed tendrils of wavy black hair over his brow and his smelling of cologne and champagne.  
“Were you—” he sputtered, taking off his sunglasses.  
“Yeah, Jason, Dave, and I just came from Ben's wedding over on Bainbridge Island,” he answered. “Oh, it was beautiful, a little lavish even. I wish I could've taken pictures, and I wish you and Jerry were there, too—”  
Lars grimaced at the very sound of Kirk's words. He had no idea if he even knew of things going on between Ben and Sonia, or himself and Sonia for that matter. That nauseated feeling returned to him once again, and he ran a hand over his belly as he returned to his seat in the cab of the truck.  
“Back to the hotel?” suggested Jerry.  
“Please,” he answered, closing the door.  
“Wait, where you going?” asked Kirk. “The lockers are this way, man.”  
“Hang on—I need to change my pants—I have been out all night and I don't have anything here, so just—tell James and Jason and the hands to hang tight for a moment.”  
Kirk nodded in affirmation, and Jerry lifted the parking brake so they could ride all the way down to the end of the alley. They reached the side street with a hang to the right back to the hotel there.  
“I'll be waiting right here,” Jerry told him as he climbed out of the passenger seat of the truck once again. Once he had asked the front desk for a new key, Lars sprinted to the elevator there in the lobby; he was eager to board off to his floor and unlock that door.  
“God, my dick is so—fucking—ITCHY!” he blurted out to himself once the door was closed. “And not itchy like how it itches if I don't wash it—”  
He stopped and examined the room. Sonia, or the maids, had made his bed for him, and gave him clean towels: his overnight bag had been left untouched there on the floor before the table. He remembered the princess cake Mia had bought him on their last night together; she bought him some pandekager for breakfast, and he never could touch it the next morning because of things happening. But he saw the top of the table remained empty: the little bag from the bakery had gone, either thrown into the garbage by someone or stolen by Sonia.  
“She took my pandekager,” he said aloud. “She fucking took my pandekager. The pandekager Mia bought me at that bakery up the street.”  
He peered to his left at the desk clock and realized he was on a schedule once again for his show.  
“Oh, fock it,” he muttered to himself as he stooped down to take off his boots, and then peeled off his jeans.


	104. Chapter 104

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Millions of peaches, peaches for me.  
> Millions of peaches, peaches for free!”  
> -”Peaches”, The Presidents of the United States of America

Over the next couple of weeks, Lars kept his mind focused on drumming and on giving interviews at their tour dates, either with James or solo. It wasn't until he gave his third when he realized his answers had grown in substantial length, and he found himself speaking more, more than normal. Perhaps it had to do with the interviewers asking him first or his merely seizing the opportunity given James often stood next to him, withdrawn and fixed more on writing a new set of lyrics.  
And all the while, whenever he had something to eat during the day, the food touched his tongue and never registered. All of the things that had happened back in Portland and in Seattle had left his taste buds and the desire for food to fill him up had run dry. Filling his stomach had become nothing more than a necessity by the time they wound their way back to the Midwestern United States.  
It was such a strange period for him, going on the tour dates and doing the bare minimum at each show. And every night after each show, he returned to his hotel room for a shower and then to bed.  
His hair always looked as though he had been caught out in the rain after a show and yet he took it in stride. The girls of the Pacific Northwest had left him wandering about the halls of the hotels and the locker rooms of the venues with a vacant look upon his face.  
The times he scanned his own reflection in the bathroom mirrors, he gazed on at himself, at his face and his body. Over those two weeks, he watched his belly and the love handles over his hips slim down and tighten back up to the original slimness, that slender appearance that he had always known before Mia entered the picture. In fact, at one point, he found himself eating less and less during dinner time and at the breakfast buffets in the hotels.  
One evening, at the hotel outside of Chicago, Lars made an observation at their dinner in the nice restaurant an hour before the show. He found himself feeling full by the time he finished a single helping of pasta: he could hardly tolerate another one. Indeed, Jason pulled him aside after dinner on the way to the locker rooms in a nearby nook in the wall.  
“Is everything alright with you?” he asked Lars in a low voice so none of the stage hands overheard them.  
“With me?” he stammered. “Yeah, I'm fine.”  
“Really? Because—I don't think you are, Lars. You haven't been eating as much and I've noticed you going back to your room early more and more.”  
“No, I swear, Jason. It's—It's fine. Granted, you know, I—I miss Cliff. I still miss him.”  
“Sure, sure, of course. Of course, I get it.”  
“And—I don't think James seems to understand this. Or Kirk for that matter.”  
“So that's why you've been so distraught lately?”  
“Pretty much, yeah. I mean, I want to tell them but James is a bigger recluse than I am, and Kirk is often gone doing things for lengthy stretches of time.”  
“Then there's all the business with everything—”  
“That, too.”  
“—and then there's me.”  
“And then there's you, yes. I miss Cliff but I like you, though. I like what you are doing with us.”  
“And so you don't think your band mates and friends feel the same?”  
“Yes.”  
“And you want them to?”  
“Yes.”  
Jason hesitated, rubbing his chin and not knowing what to say to him right at that moment.  
“Okay,” he concluded, pressing his hands to his hips. “Alright. I understand you love those guys—”  
“And I do. They're like the brothers I never had. And so are you.”  
Jason pressed a hand to his chest.  
“Well, if nothing, at least eat something before you go on stage in a bit. I'll look around for something and you just go and change your clothes. Your face is looking mighty thin as of late.”  
The two of them left the nook, and Lars pressed onward to the locker room to take off his shirt and adjust his hair. He sat there in his jeans and in disbelief, disbelief that he had lied to Jason right at that moment. But on the other hand, he was finding him something to eat up before the show, something Mia did at their first show together.  
But this time around, it was a warm late spring evening in Chicago, and thus he figured he should take off his jeans and go out in a pair of shorts. If the warmth proved to be too much, he could always take those off and let everyone see his almost naked body drenched in sweat. He stood to his feet right as Jason came into the room with the halves of a fresh peach.  
“This was all I could find on hand, man,” he told Lars.  
“That will do, thank you.” He took the halves and took a bite of the one on the left. Loaded with juice and that sensual sweet flavor, a flavor combined with a mood that he missed, and had missed since that fateful night two weeks before.  
Lars stood there in his underwear eating two separated halves of a peach, one after the other, right in front of Jason. But there was something missing: he missed that female form before him. He kept his eye on Jason as he changed out of his shirt and his jeans right next to him; he could feel juices dripping down from his lip and it took for it to drip onto the top of his chest for him to give it his attention. He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and bent down to keep anymore from dribbling on his chin and his chest.  
He stood like that the whole time he ate up the peach and then wiped his hands on his shorts before heading out to the stage with James, Kirk, and Jason.  
At some point during the show, Lars switched to autopilot and he was drumming just for the sake of drumming before all of these people. He could still feel the juice of the peach on his chest and his chin, and the taste never left his mouth even with his lapping his tongue out of his mouth like a dog.  
Perhaps it was intentional that Jason gave him a peach, or maybe Lars imagined things happening as he reached tunnel vision on his drum kit: he led his band forth. He needed to lead them, given he was the spine and the rhythm, and Jason followed along to keep the whole shebang together.  
And then Lars remembered he had forgotten to tell James about the Mother Love Bone concert. These past two weeks, he had forgotten about it and now they were going about with business as usual.  
If anything, any of the audience members up close to the stage later described the band's mood as downright chilly, especially when they played the two new songs, “Blackened” and the one that carried the echo of Mia laying comatose in the hospital, “One.”  
The floor underneath Lars rumbled with Jason's bass for both songs, and perhaps the idea emerged from his depressed state of mind when he imagined the new album with the bass put into the background. At the very least put in the background to give the music a colder mood within. Cold like the feeling inside of his chest and all over his body despite the sweat starting to bead around the base of his spine. They all seemed to enjoy the frigid mood of the songs: perhaps that could help further bring them into the light of day. But one thing stood for certain with him and that was to rid himself of these emotions.  
Within time, he returned to the locker room for a quick shower followed by a retreat into his room for the night. Before falling to sleep, he remembered they had a week off between then and their next round of shows in the South.  
Perhaps it was the peach, or perhaps it was the fact he missed Ben's wedding, but Lars had an idea to sort things out with Sonia and he had to do it in a way to make him forget Mia: if he wanted a better life and have a better mood heading into the making of their next album, he had to make things right with her. He kept the idea firm in mind as he fell asleep and it remained his motive upon waking up and running to the airport to catch the next flight back to Portland without a word to anyone: he landed at the airport at a quarter to noon.  
He took the first taxi out of the airport to the Bennetts' house. Upon stepping out of the taxi and thanking the driver, he lifted the mirrored sunglasses to flash at Marcia, who knelt down before the shrubs on the side of the house while wearing a pair of gardening gloves. She gasped at the sight of him striding towards her.  
“Lars! What are you doing here?” she demanded, gripping onto the gate as if he was about to break it down.  
“Hello, Marcia, is Sonia home?” he asked her, nonplussed. Sonia rounded the corner of the house behind Marcia right then, wearing nothing but a plain white camisole and bright red mini shorts. She strode over to the gate with a slight sneer upon her face. Lars set his overnight bag down on the grass and slipped his sunglasses into the pocket of his shirt. Sonia patted Marcia's hand to let go of the gate and then she opened the gate to come face to face with him.  
“Well, well, well, look who decided to show up,” she taunted him.  
“You have to help me,” he pleaded to her. “Please.”  
She raised her eyebrows at him.  
“Oh?” She turned her head. “Hey, Marsh, guess what? A couple of weeks ago, I couldn't even get him to come back to his own hotel room. Now it's 'please.'”  
She returned to him still with a sneer upon her face.  
“Yes,” he begged her.  
“What's the problem, then?” She folded her arms over her chest.  
“I am wasting away.”  
“Wasting away? You look like you've gained weight more than anything.”  
“No, I am wasting away,” he insisted. “Look at me! My love handles are disappearing and I cannot catch a break if it killed me. I am not performing like I used to and I need a proper release.”  
Sonia folded her arms over her chest as he dropped down to his knees before her bare, toned legs. “Do you promise not to bail on me again?”  
“Yes, yes, yes,” he vowed.  
“Would you be willing to not eat for a while?”  
He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. “What do you mean? Like, not eat for an hour or all day?”  
“That's for me and Marcia to know and for you to find out, big boy.”  
He lay the front of his head against her knees. How he wanted that perfect combination: to eat and to have her at the same time. But his appetite could back seat to his other appetite. The feel of her right in front of him was enough to send even more waves of tension throughout him, so much that his head began to ache with a dull pain.  
“Sonia, just give it to him,” Marcia insisted, picking up the trowel. “Kirk and I were talking the other night and he's been borderline intolerable from all the reclusiveness.”  
“What a minute, you talked to Kirk?” Sonia demanded.  
“You talked to Kirk?” Lars echoed, lifting his head.  
“Yes. We talk all the time. And he called me just last night and we got to talking about Lars and how his answers in interviews have been more terse than normal.”  
“Marcia!” Sonia barked.  
“What?”  
“Last night? No, you had a chance with Kirk before. It's my turn to talk to him on the phone!”  
Lars clasped onto Sonia's knees and stared up at her with his lips twitching and his face warm with tension.  
“Sonia, darling, please! I am dying here! I need your pussy and your ass! You've got to help me, please!”  
Sonia swallowed as she stared down at him with a baffled expression upon her face and her hands pressed to her hips.  
“Never in a million years did I think I would have a fat little Danish man on my doorstep—”  
“Oh, get off it, I lost twenty pounds the past two weeks!” he snapped.  
“—a chubby little Danish man at my gate, begging me for sex,” she finished her remark. “Never.”  
“You might as well do it, Sonia,” Marcia pointed out, “he's obviously desperate. Stop breaking his balls and just let him have it.”  
Sonia fetched up an exasperated sigh as she ran her tongue along the inside of her lips. Lars could feel the heat between her legs. How he wanted it right then, and it need not matter to him about the setting. For all she knew, he was ready to make love right there on the grass in front of Marcia. She sighed again and closed her eyes.  
“Okay, okay. Come on inside,” she coaxed him.


	105. Chapter 105

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I still remember the dream there.  
> I still remember the time you said goodbye.  
> Did we really tell lies?  
> Letting in the sunshine,  
> Did we really count to one hundred?”  
> -”Long Distance Runaround”, Yes

Lars had set his overnight bag next to the base of the couch in the living room before he followed Sonia back to her bedroom upstairs. He stripped off his black button up shirt followed by his undershirt, and then climbed onto her bed. He lay flat on his back with his arms stretched out from his body: he breathed deep to take in the scent emanating from her pits and her neck. She loomed close to his face. He was going to do it. He was going to let Sonia have her way with him even after everything she had done, even slotting in between Ben and his new bride.  
“God—give it to me, Sonia,” he begged. “Do your worst. Do your fucking worst!”  
Her tongue lashed out of her mouth and he tried to relax every muscle in his body. She stopped with her face looming right over him, her large brown eyes searing into his psyche like a pair of fresh lit marijuana cigarettes, her lips moistened from taking a drink of water before and hence parted to mimic the shape of her vagina, and then—  
“What's the matter?” she asked him.  
“I don't know,” he sputtered. “I just—”  
“What?”  
He swallowed.  
“This feels—wrong,” he confessed. “And yet so right.”  
“You know you want it, big boy,” she whispered to him, hanging closer to his face. He ran the tip of his tongue along the edges of his lips. He could smell the skin on her lips when Marcia's voice emerged from upstairs.  
“Sonia!”  
“Shit!” she declared in a hushed voice. She lifted her head to better call out to the corridor.  
“Yes?”  
“You better come down here.”  
“Dammit.” She climbed off of him and picked up her camisole from the bed post. She slipped it back on before she returned to the rest of the house. On one hand, Lars was relieved that she had left the room. But on the other hand, he wanted her to come back. He wanted her to come back and give him the reason behind his coming to the house and all the way out to Portland. Everything about his body ached and itched with the tension, the tension of a young man who had been left hanging and unsatisfied across the board. He lay there flat on his back, unsure of what to think or do right then.  
He heard voices float up from downstairs: he recognized Sonia's voice, followed by Marcia's voice, and then—  
“Dave?” he muttered aloud. He knew Dave's voice anywhere. But who was that fourth voice, that other woman? Who else could have showed up to the house—  
Sonia burst back into the room and shut the door right behind her, but she shut the door with care, as if not to make any sort of noise. She parted her lips so as to let out a long low whistle. Lars lifted his head to see what was the matter.  
“It's nothing,” she swore to him, peeling off her camisole again to expose her breasts and her stomach. She crawled back onto the bed, over his feet and his legs before reaching his waist, now twenty pounds slimmer from the first time they made love in Seattle.  
“Come to me,” she whispered, undoing the button on his jeans.  
“Only if you come to me,” he retorted with a smirk.  
A thud emerged outside of the room, one so loud Sonia lunged forward and wound up suspending herself over Lars' body. Another thud soon followed, then Dave said something.  
“Do not make a sound,” he whispered to her.  
The mousy brown curls about her head dangled down towards his face. He was ready. He felt it. He wanted it. But before she could even begin to touch his chest, another loud thump outside the door caused her to slap his chest on accident. He yelped out and she leapt back as if she had been burned.  
“Put that damn thing down!” he heard Dave yell out.  
“Sonia, what is going on?” Lars demanded, his words moving at a rapid pace.  
“Okay, um—” She rolled onto her back for a second for something on the nightstand; she returned with a rolled up dollar bill. “—would you like to make twenty bucks?”  
“Twenty dollars? What the fuck am I going to do with twenty dollars?”  
“I don't know, but—” She licked her lips and followed it up with a nibble.  
“But what? Sonia, darling—I appreciate the effort, but I want you to handle me. Handle me. Ravage me. Put your lips around my head and give it a blow like you would a whistle. Do something. And I don't care what sum of money you pay me, or the lack thereof for that matter. I will catch fire otherwise. Satan himself will have to douse me.”  
The door flung open right then and a small, slender woman with strawberry blonde hair burst into the room holding a hatchet in one hand. She pointed at Sonia.  
“YOU!” she screeched. “YOU! YOU!”  
“Me?” Sonia demanded.  
“Her?” was all Lars could follow up with.  
“YOU, TOO!” she shouted at him. Lars pushed himself into an upright position, his jeans undone and his heart hammering inside of his chest.  
“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, his voice breaking.  
“I'm Angela Shepherd!”  
“Angela?” Lars wondered aloud, glancing at Sonia next to him, who covered her bare chest with her arms.  
“Ben Shepherd's wife! And I know what the two of you have been up to!”  
“Me?” he sputtered. “Me! I—I did not do anything! I swear!”  
“You're sleeping with HER! That little home wrecker and whore next to you!”  
“No?!”  
“No!” Sonia exclaimed.  
“What's that, then?” She pointed a finger at the rolled up dollar bill in Sonia's right hand. She flicked it off to the side.  
“Nothing!”  
“That was money! That was fucking money! You paid her to sleep with you!”  
“That was her money, I swear!” Lars shrieked.  
“Oh, right. And this is my HUSBAND'S ax! I WILL KILL YOU BOTH WITH IT!”  
Dave wrapped his arms around her waist and yanked her out of the room; Sonia lifted herself off of the bed but Lars had no idea what to do right at that moment other than watch Dave throw Angela about the hall like a rag doll before diving for her to keep her out of the room. Sonia ran out of the room topless.  
“Marcia!” she yelled down the stairs. “Marcia! Marcia, call the cops!”  
“I already did!” Marcia hollered. Panting, Lars clambered off of the bed, his whole body trembling from the tension of going untouched and from the empty feeling in his stomach, except he did not feel hungry. He shut the door so he would not have to hear, or witness, Dave and Angela wrestling in the hall.  
Lars pressed his back against the panel of the door and slid down to the floor. He spread his legs and slouched his back so as to ease the tense feelings in his body. He sighed and breathed through his mouth to slow down his heart beat. He had no idea if he was more aroused than horrified, or vice versa.  
He heard Angela cursing as Dave did something to her out there. Lars closed his eyes to better relax himself. Tiny glimmers of hunger emerged from the emptiness inside of his stomach; but that still did nothing to alleviate the tension in Lars' body. Everything seemed to be calming down outside of the door: she groaned and grunted underneath Dave.  
Within time, two patrol officers showed up to the house. One of them asked Lars if he was alright and he could hardly concentrate on his own train of thought or his own sense of speech. To think had Dave not showed up at the house, he and Sonia would have been chopped down into cubes.  
They hauled Angela away in the back of a patrol car back to the station in downtown, which signified a visit from Ben if he knew where the Bennetts lived there in Portland.  
Lars stayed seated at the kitchen table in nothing more than his jeans as he watched them drive away through the front doorway. He knitted his eyebrows at the sight of the early afternoon sun beginning to reflect on the doorstep and into the front foyer. Marcia took a seat across from him at the table.  
“She broke down the door?” he asked her, gesturing to the door.  
“She did, yeah. Blows me away she was able to break down the door, you know with the doorknob and everything. Apparently, Sonia and Ben got caught. Do you know about that at all? The whole thing with Sonia and Ben?”  
“I do, yes. Layne told me everything a couple of weeks ago.”  
“Yeah, I guess Ben missed the ferry so he had to wing it on the Seattle mainland with Mia—you know, with her hauling Sonia's love letters up and whatnot.”  
“Right, right.”  
“Mia hit up Dave—I guess Megadeth is touring right down the road from us right now—and told him she worried about this crazy woman coming after you, me, and Sonia. I guess when she mentioned your name, he totally wigged out.”  
“Well, yeah. Dave is like my older brother.”  
“Hang on, I thought Kirk and James were.”  
“They all are. And Jason, too. They are all like the brothers I never had growing up in Copenhagen.”  
Sonia entered the room from the downstairs hallway right then with her hair soaking wet. She turned to Marcia with an expression of concern upon her face.  
“Did you call Mia?” she asked her.  
“No. I'm going to, though. I might just leave a message—she's been working overtime lately at the salon. She's trying to save to go to France.”  
Lars sighed through his nose at the sound of Mia's name and the thought of her working too much as well. He brushed his bangs out of his eyes before he rested the side of his head on the back of his knuckles. He recalled her dreams in full detail, how she wanted to attend Cordon Bleu at some point and his declaration of support to her. The main reason of his flashing back on the memory was the though of his parents sitting right there with him eating breakfast.  
He peered up at Sonia and her curls, dripping wet and reminding him of what the two of them could have done in that little room upstairs.  
Meanwhile, Marcia paced about the floor before him with the handheld phone up to her ear. Dave emerged from the side of the house and onto the doorstep: he stood there in the doorway with his hands pressed to his hips.  
“I hope she doesn't press charges against you,” Sonia confessed to him.  
“She won't,” he assured her, stepping into the house. “Ben's too good of a kid and I was protecting the four of you. Especially him.” He nodded at Lars, whose heart started to pound inside of his chest once again.  
“You don't fuck with my band mates,” Dave declared. “And you don't fuck with friends of my band mates, either.”  
Lars sighed through his nose before turning his head to take a better look at Marcia even though she had her back turned to him.  
“Mia, hi, it's Marcia. Give Sonia and me a call back when you get this—it's really important. Love you, bye-bye.” He stood to his feet and strode back down to the hall to the stairs. He returned to the bedroom to fetch his clothes. He had fixed his jeans and put his tennis shoes back onto his feet when a knock on the door caught his attention. He lifted his gaze to see Sonia standing in the doorway with his eyebrows knitted together and her lips parted by a mere hair.  
“I'm just going to take a walk,” he told her, tightening his laces and standing back to his feet.  
“But what about—?” She gestured to the bed behind him.  
“I—I need to clear my head,” he confessed. “You know, after all of that, I just—I need to get away from this house for a bit.”  
“Okay, but—can we at least—kiss?”  
He sighed through his nose as he scanned her slender body before him: a mere piece of cloth separated him from her flesh.  
“I honestly don't know what I want from you,” he admitted. “But—one thing is for certain. I do want you, Sonia. I do. I don't know what I want from you. But I do want you.”  
She placed her hands on his shoulders and gave him a gentle massage.  
“Come back here, though,” she advised him.  
“I will. Shit, I might as well—Mia and I are broken up and my car is back in San Francisco.”  
Sonia ran the tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth before letting go of him. Lars padded down the stairs, dressed and with his sunglasses in hand. Marcia and Dave congregated in the kitchen, talking in quiet voices about something or other, and thus he ducked out of the house, through the open door and onto the front lawn. He slipped on his sunglasses just prior to reaching the sunlight. He had no idea where he was headed, but he would rather tour more about this part of Portland.


	106. Chapter 106

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You find yourself in the kitchen, and you see an eclair in the receptacle, and you think to yourself 'what the hell—I'll just eat some trash!'”  
> -Jerry Seinfeld

He crossed the street so as to reach the last corner before Multnomah Boulevard. The street was deserted, aside from the old man on the sidewalk and a pair of tiny cars whirring past on the road ahead of him. He turned his head to the left to take a better look at the sun as it bathed the neighborhood in warmth indicative of the late spring; Lars returned to the sidewalk before him with the sun at the side of his head and his shoulders. The soles of his tennis shoes padded on the concrete with a series of quiet clomps; he passed several bushes of lilac lining the edge of a yard and caught a whiff of those tiny bright purple flowers. They had just began to bloom, their aroma fresh, soft, and clean, like his hair smelled whenever he stepped out of a shower.  
He reached the corner of Multnomah and peered in every which direction before crossing the black pavement towards the sidewalk on the other side.  
He hurried a bit so as to beat out another small car hurtling towards him.  
To his right stood a stretch of tiny shops and—a bakery at the very end of the block before the next corner. It wasn't Smell the Magic, but it still piqued his interest, especially since it stood next door to a record shop.  
He passed the window of a small boutique and stopped for a moment to take a better look at himself after what had happened in the house that afternoon. The mirrored sunglasses shone and shimmered inside of the reflection, and in turn beheld him a pair of even more reflections; the lower half of his face had slimmed down from the round full moonlike shape he had learned to love to a narrowing oval, and the slight double underneath his chin receded into his flesh. Meanwhile, his neck developed a pair of light width way creases on either side of his Adam's apple. Too much weight lost in too brief of a time, and too much of said weight consisted of fat.  
He fondled the front of his neck at the sight of the creases and thought about the sight of three or four chins lining the bottom of his face, the weight of them dragging him down like a turkey neck. A gross, flabby turkey neck underneath the face of a boy wasting away. He really was wasting away.  
Something else about his reflection caught his eye, and he moved his face closer to the glass. Lars lifted his sunglasses and pouted his bottom lip to take a closer examination. No pain nagged at him, but the split opened up right on the middle of his lip and the very sight of the deep red slit irritated him.  
“How did that happen?” he wondered aloud.  
He returned his sunglasses to his face to protect his eyes from the glare and then he faced the sidewalk before him. He hesitated for a moment to feel the sudden bout of breeze from around the row in front of him: he closed his eyes and took in the breeze flowing through his bangs and the hair on the crown of his head. A hint of lilac rode in there; he breathed deep and the cool fragrant air filled his lungs before he took another step forward. There was that bakery resting at the end: nothing fancy or anything that caught his attention like the Swedish ones in Eureka and Ballard, but a mere bakery with a display in the window bearing all manner of fresh breads, muffins, and a couple of cakes right over his head. The inside of the bakery itself consisted of wood bathing in the warm glow of amber lights on the ceiling. He spotted a rack of muffins and things right smack in the middle of the room.  
It all looked so delicious, especially since he had had not a bite to eat since he landed in Portland that morning, and yet he lacked the desire to walk into the shop for a bite to eat. A different place altogether, given everything was a different shade of amber and brown compared to fiery red and black and white checker board, but that memory of walking into Smell the Magic that first morning still remained with him.  
The memory played over inside of his mind twice more at the sight of a female baker behind the counter on the inside, organizing a batch of danishes on her cookie sheet. Since it was later in the day, Lars figured those were either a day old or ones that neglected to make the cut. He contemplated heading up to the corner when she turned her back to him and headed towards the back door in front of her. She was going to throw those out!  
He crept up to the corner of the building and hung right there next to the edge of the bricks. He stared straight ahead down the side street in front of him. He waited for a brief moment, when he heard the back door of the bakery swing open on squeaky hinges.  
He closed his eyes behind the mirrored lenses and listened to the rustling of plastic, followed by a snap of an elastic band. Some more noises, followed by the closing of the door. He waited for another moment until he could hear only but silence down the sidewalk.  
Lars darted around the corner and spotted a clear plastic garbage sack on the concrete next to a couple of metal garbage cans. He crouched down before the sack so as to better see the cream cheese danishes on the inside. He untied the knot at the mouth of the bag and reached in for the one on top. The danish fit right in the palm of his hand: it felt crispy on the bottom, crispy and decadent, crafted to perfection. He lifted the corner to his mouth for a bite.  
It was like eating cardboard; the cream cheese on the other hand lacked that light kiss of sweetness.  
“Stale,” he muttered, grimacing and almost gagging. “These are focking stale!”  
He spit out the bite and returned the danish to the garbage sack before climbing back onto his feet. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before wheeling back around towards the corner. Upon reaching the corner of the street, he turned back to face the trash by the side door long enough to ponder if this bakery behind him had the chops to compete with Smell the Magic. That bakery meanwhile was not too far from that corner: he thought about walking over there to poke his head in to see Mia again, but again, it was later in the day. She probably returned home at that point and he had no wheels to drive over to the blue and white house with the oak tree in the front yard.  
“I fly here, nearly get my ass cheeks sliced with a hatchet, and eat a stale danish all within a matter of not even two hours,” he said aloud, “I need not go over there and dig myself further into this hole.”  
Standing there, and gazing about the street with his hands stuffed into his pockets so as to emphasize his shirt, the numb sensation persisted inside of him. He carried no feeling of anything, nothing more than the feeling of the afternoon sun upon the side of his head. Memories associated with Smell the Magic and that terrible danish behind him left him feeling numb. He sighed through his nose and crossed the street without giving the record shop behind him a second thought, another thing so unlike him.  
Lars kept walking along Multnomah Boulevard until he reached the northern side of Portland. At that point, the sun disappeared behind the shade of tall oak trees over his head, which in turn endowed him with a cool contrast from the warm sun. This gave him the chance to take a seat on a nearby bench before the stretch of grass and next to a man reading a newspaper.  
“Hi, Lars,” he greeted him; Lars turned to him, startled. He rested the paper on his lap to reveal his long black hair down to his shoulders and his oval face with beady black eyes.  
“Trent! What are you doing here?”  
“Waiting for my ride,” he replied, not changing his tone of voice for a second. Trent turned his head the other way and nodded.  
“There she is right now, in fact.” He folded up the paper before standing up and tucking it underneath his armpit. Lars recognized Mia's car heading towards them. He sucked in his gut, even though the bottom of his shirt protected the sight of his belly from her. She pulled up to the curb and slowed to a stop; Trent lunged for the passenger door and climbed into the front seat. As he buckled himself in, Mia leaned towards the open window with a bemused look upon her face: he could see the plain white camisole upon her body and the bandanas tied around her wrists.  
“Hi,” she called out to him.  
“Hi,” answered Lars, not taking off his sunglasses for her.  
“Do you want a ride somewhere?” she offered him, and he shook his head at her.  
“Are you okay?” she asked him. “You don't look well.”  
Trent turned to him for a better look himself and frowned at the sight of him.  
“Yeah, man, you look—like—gaunt,” he pointed out.  
“It's—It's fine, I swear,” Lars assured them.  
“Well—okay,” she replied, giving her hair a toss, “if you need anything, Trent and I will be down at my house. You know where I live, so—”  
“Yes,” he replied, terse, “thank you for the gesture.”  
Without another word, Mia and Trent drove away and Lars watched them go around a corner to head back to her house. He had no idea what to think or feel right at that moment, and then he was glad he kept his sunglasses on over his face so no one could see the tears brimming his eyes. He could make the one assumption that she had run off with Trent. He felt his lips tremble and then he parted them for a split second for a gasp.  
They broke up and she ran off with Trent, meanwhile he had Sonia chasing his ass.  
Lars stood to his feet and rounded the bench to head into the grass. No one else was in this small sliver of a park, which gave him the chance to take a seat behind one of the trees, away from the street. He took off his glasses and bowed his head. He couldn't understand it: he and Mia had broken up and he swore he did it for the best, and yet he wept for her and for himself.  
The stale taste of the danish lingered in the back of his mouth. Stale and disgusting, and past its prime, much like his time with her. And yet he wanted it. He wanted her back with him, but he could only bring his knees up to his chest so as to hide from any onlookers.  
He wanted to sink into the tree trunk behind him and into the grass underneath him. Just become one with the earth again.  
He hid his face with his arms and his thighs so his sobs stayed close to him.  
“I am such an idiot,” he whimpered. “I am such an idiot and a fool. What—what the—what the fuck have I done. What have I done.”  
Lars lifted his head so as to rest his face on the back of his hand. He sniffled and gasped as he closed his eyes. He thought of laying down on the grass but never brought up the strength to do such a thing. He did not want to stand back up and head back to the Bennetts' house, because he knew what awaited him there. He could only sit there with his back to the tree and the street under the shade.  
He must have drifted off to sleep because he awoke to the sound of a dog sniffling right next to him. He lifted his head to see the fuzzy black snout of an ungroomed giant standard poodle lingering before his face: he spotted a red collar around its neck and its wiry tail wagging at him like an antenna in the wind.  
“Oh,” he greeted, opening his legs and lifting himself into an upright position to pet the dog. “Oh, hello.”  
The poodle put its paws together as it took a seat next to him. Lars lifted himself onto his knees to pet the dog on either side of its haunches, its disheveled fur soft like chenille. It lifted its head at him so he could look into those small black eyes underneath its fuzzy bangs. He paused for a moment so the dog could drop its snout for a greeting sniffle: the dog then lifted its paw for another series of pets. Lars dropped his hands down towards the dog's belly and he remembered how much he loved his own rubbed by someone else's hand.  
“Ace!” a voice called out from Lars' left. The poodle perked up, and he peered around him to see Matt from Soundgarden striding towards him in cut off shorts, a plain white shirt, and streamlined black high tops: he, too, had mirrored sunglasses upon his face, right underneath that wave of golden blond hair. The dog stood up and trotted away from Lars, and then Matt recognized him.  
“Oh, hey! I didn't expect to see you here.”  
“The same goes for you,” Lars replied, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand. He picked up his sunglasses from the grass before standing to his feet.  
“I'm just down here taking my dog for a little road trip before we go back on the road in a while,” explained Matt.  
“I just took a walk,” said Lars, blunt. Matt hesitated to take a closer look at his face.  
“Have you been crying?”  
Lars sighed and shifted his weight.  
“I have, yes,” he confessed. “I don't want to talk about it, though…” His voice trailed off as he watched Ace sniffle the grass right next to them.  
“I need a—a ride,” was all he could say. “If it's not too much trouble.”  
“Oh no, not at all. I can do that for you. Where you headed?”  
“I—I shall show you,” he stammered, putting his sunglasses back on over his face. He followed Matt and Ace back to the small, shabby light gray Pinto: the dog climbed into the back seat first before Lars climbed into the passenger seat. Matt started up the car and “Strutter” by Kiss played at a low volume on the stereo; Lars didn't mind just so long as he took him back to the Bennetts' house.  
Dave and Marcia sat next to one another there on the front step, both of them holding glasses of some kind of red liquid.  
Matt pulled up to the curb on Lars' side, right at the sound of Dave's voice saying “there he is.”  
Lars turned his head the other way as he unfastened his seat belt.  
“Thank you,” he told him in a low voice.  
“Of course,” answered Matt, resting his hand on his thigh.  
“Hey, it's Matt!” Marcia declared; he waved at her with a big beaming smile.  
“Hey, uh—Marcia, right?”  
“Yeah! You want to come in for a drink?” she offered.  
“I don't see why not.” He switched off the engine and unfastened his own seat belt. Lars climbed out right as he told her about his dog. He dodged past Dave at the doorstep to find Sonia walking into the living room with a glass of beer in one hand.  
“There you are,” she said as part of her greeting. She smirked at the sight of him. “You wanna have a little quickie?”  
“I still have no idea what I want, darling,” he admitted, taking off his sunglasses. “I saw Mia earlier. She was with Trent.”  
“With Trent, seriously?”  
“Yeah. I am unsure how I feel about it, either.”  
He tucked the sunglasses into his jeans pocket and ran a hand through his hair.  
“Truth be known, Sonia, I do not feel anything at all,” he confessed to her with a shrug, “—it is as if the well has run dry.”


	107. Chapter 107

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It comes down to this:  
> your kiss, your fist  
> And your strain, it gets under my skin  
> within, take in  
> the extent of my sin.”  
> -”Sin”, Nine Inch Nails

“Come on, Lars—” Sonia begged him, laying on her side in her T-shirt and her panties, and running her finger along the slight curvature of his belly; “those feelings have got to be in there. They have to be in that body somewhere. They have to be!”  
It was later in the evening, following a round of dinner with Dave and Matt: the latter and his dog left early to head back up to Seattle, while the former had just left the house. Marcia made a trip over to Mia's house to check up on things. This in turn left Lars and Sonia with the house to themselves, but they still sought the privacy and comfort of her bedroom. He had taken off his shirt and his shoes and lay down on his back on the bed as if presenting himself to her. He lay there, completely exposed to her: two layers of fabric the only things separating him from her.  
“Forgive me, but they are not,” he admitted with a shrug. “I cannot feel anything.”  
“Come on, you've got to be getting horny right about now. Look, I'm touching you and I'm getting close to your junk. I can tell you ate a fair amount earlier, that's good. That has to be good.”  
“I am just—it is not there. And although I ate something earlier, it does not mean I feel like doing it. I'm not feeling it. I am just—I am so tired.”  
“Come on, baby. Come on—come on. Come.” She flashed him a smirk.  
Lars shifted his weight as she reached the top of his jeans. She was about to fondle the button when she removed her hand from his waist and climbed off of the bed.  
“Sonia!” he called after her.  
“What?” she demanded.  
“Come back, please. I just—I just—”  
Letting out an exasperated sigh, she climbed back onto the bed and spread her thighs apart so he could see in between her thighs.  
“I don't understand you,” she confessed. “I'm trying to make you feel better and yet you're resisting me.”  
He swallowed as he glanced down at Sonia's shaved thighs.  
“I'm uncomfortable,” he stated in a flat tone of voice.  
“Why are you uncomfortable? I thought Danes were supposed to be kinky. Six million people on that tiny little stretch of islands—there's gotta be some tricks up your sleeve that you're not sharing with me.”  
He squirmed even more in his spot there on the bed.  
“I don't feel good,” he confessed again. “I don't feel good in my own skin.”  
Sonia tossed her hair back from her face to show off her neck.  
“Come on, sexy boy,” she encouraged him in a husky voice. “I know you think I'm hot. And well, I think you're hot. I think you are absolutely torrid and smoldering.”  
He nibbled on his bottom lip as she inched closer to his face.  
“I saw Mia earlier,” he blurted out.  
“You did?” She hung there, taken aback.  
“Yes. She was—with—Trent.”  
“Are you serious?”  
“Dead serious.”  
Her tongue lashed out of her mouth and she loomed over his face: he could smell the tomatoes and the basil her breath. She had it in her. She was about to give him, even in the wake of what had happened earlier that day.  
“All the more reason then,” she whispered to him. “You are so hot.”  
He grimaced and then she fumed at him.  
“Come ON!” she cried out. “LARS!”  
Annoyed, Sonia climbed off of him again and flounced out of the room. Lars realized what he had done and clambered off of the bed. He chased after her, only to trip over one of his tennis shoes. He fell face first into the floor.  
“What was that?” she demanded. “Oh my God! Oh my God, are you okay?”  
“I can't—I cannot move,” he said in a muffled voice. “I feel ass over tea kettle—”  
He could feel her hands sliding underneath his chest so as to pick him up off of the floor. Sonia grunted as she lifted him off of the floor: his lower back and his chest both ached from the fall, or from something else.  
“Fucking hell, you weigh a ton!” she declared.  
“One hundred fifty eight pounds, Sonia, darling—it's all me. It's all me here—”  
He set his knee on the carpet so as to better lift himself up off of the floor, but his back and chest continued to pulse with the ache and he ended up falling back onto the floor. He rolled onto his side to see her looming over him. He kept an eye on her chest: the white fabric of her T-shirt accentuated her breasts, and he could see the points making up her nipples poking out from arousal. She pushed him all the way onto his back and then she placed her hands on either side of his head. She grinned at him. He stared at her chest once again.  
“You're mine, now,” she whispered. She ran the tip of her index finger along his chest and he heard a pleasured groan emerge from the inside of her throat.  
“Come on, you sexy, sexy boy—come on. I want you. And I know you want me.”  
He swallowed and followed up with a relaxation of his back muscles.  
“Come on,” she whispered into his face, “come on—I know you've got it.”  
He closed his eyes as she brought her lips to his mouth. They were locked right then, especially when he felt her hand on his belly. She remembered! She remembered what he said about having his belly rubbed after he had eaten.  
Sonia began to breathe in more deeply as she kissed him again, and again, lowering herself closer to his body with each kiss. Every exhale contained a light groan: she kept one hand on his belly and the other upon his chest. He felt her knee on the outside of his hip, pressing against his love handle which, even though he had lost weight, still remained soft and lush to the touch.  
The bones making up her knee brushed against his hip and he reacted by sucking in his belly. That was such a sacred feeling, such a sensation he had experienced with Mia and now Sonia dared to go in for herself. She dared to do such a thing for him.  
She lifted her mouth to let out a loud gasp into his ear. He groaned inside of his throat as she brought her lips to the side of his neck. His eyes popped open, only for the lids to close again with his eyes rolling towards the back of his head. After fighting it for a bit, he couldn't resist himself anymore. He needed her touch and he needed her body there with him.  
She held onto his love handles as she reached her tongue into his mouth. Her fingers squeezed his plush skin before moving down to his hips. The denim separated him from her, but he could feel her there. And then she lifted her lips off of him. He never opened his eyes as he could feel her looming over his face.  
“Oh, Lars—” she breathed into his face.  
“Oh, Mia—!”  
They both stopped at the same time.  
“I, I mean, Sonia! Sonia! Sonia!”  
She gaped at him, appalled. He could not believe he let that slip out.  
“Don't stop, please!” he pleaded. “Please—I need you! I need you!”  
She clasped her hands to the sides of his face.  
“That's what I'm talking about,” she whispered, and then she slipped the tip of her tongue into his mouth and ran it along the edges of his teeth before lifting her head again. She stared into his face, those big brown eyes swallowing him whole.  
“Let's get up on the bed, big boy,” she beckoned him in a husky voice. He watched her climb off of him and, before she returned to the bed, he caught a rather long glimpse of the crotch of her panties. He could sense it: she was growing wet right before his very eyes. He wanted to taste her as she lay down on the bed for him. He crawled over her: strands of his hair fell upon her chest. He eyed the pale stripe of bare skin between the band of her panties and the bottom of her T-shirt and then he ran the tip of his tongue along the edges of his top row of teeth.  
“I need to get my ass back home,” he told her, clearing his throat.  
“Back to San Fran?” she asked him, raising a hand towards his chest.  
“Yeah.”  
“I can drive you,” she offered, running the tip of her finger around the outside of his nipple. “When do you need to get back?”  
“Whenever. Some time between now and Sunday, when I must leave for the Deep South.”  
“Gladly, baby.”  
She glanced down at his belly, still with a little bit of a hang despite his losing some of the weight. She reached up to touch his waist, and yet part of him recoiled at the feel of her fingers there against his skin. Had it been Mia there with him, she would have been all over his body, showering him with love so soft and sweet. Sonia wanted him to change himself: she told him to lose weight after all.  
He could see it in her eyes as well. She was there to help him and nothing more. But she lay there before him in her little T-shirt and her panties, and all he needed to do was remove his jeans to come even closer to her, but he wondered if she was willing to let him do such a thing.  
“I think I will just take the next plane back down there,” he suggested.  
“Good idea,” she answered. He lowered his mouth to her lips for a kiss, but it lacked that smoldering sensation. Perhaps it was the memory of being held at the point of the head of a hatchet, or perhaps he needed to do something else to add to the mood.  
Lars reached underneath the bottom hem of her T-shirt to touch her. She let out an excited gasp as he felt her up towards her breasts. He stopped.  
“Is everything alright?” he asked her, concerned.  
“Yes. It's just—”  
He slid his hand out from underneath her shirt.  
“We can stop,” he told her. “I can put my clothes back on and catch the next red eye back down to California.”  
“No, no, no, no!” she insisted. “I'm just—I'm just used to having it a little rough, you know? Being with Kirk and all—”  
“Oh, I see. Not big on gentle touch, are you?”  
“Yeah, I actually am, but not a lot, though. We often got pretty kinky here. Between me, him, and Marcia, yeah, it got pretty rough here. My wanting to be an actress definitely helps matters because we'd do a lot of role playing and a lot of getting down that way.”  
“Whenever Mia and I got a little rough, we always managed to keep it light. Even in the times we did it doggy style.”  
“You guys did it doggy style, really?”  
“Yeah. She'd wear her diaphragm, too, so it always felt like I was smacking my dick right in between a hot dog bun. It got pretty hot, actually. She'd tie me up, too.”  
“Oh, we often tied each other up here.”  
“Did you guys feed each other?”  
“Food, or—?”  
“Either one.”  
“Kirk would give his length. Marcia and I always gave our sugar glaze. Mia would make you food and feed it to you like that?”  
“Yeah. That was really hot, feeling all restrained and wanting to break free and whatnot.”  
He tossed his bangs back with a flick of his head.  
“So you would role play, really?”  
“Yeah. I was always the slinky Hollywood bombshell with pouty lips and a knock out body while Marcia played the school girl with the cute shoes and the mini skirt. Kirk was the pimp daddy.”  
“The pimp daddy?” Lars laughed at that.  
“Yeah, he'd put on a bathrobe over his otherwise naked body,” she elaborated. “He always looked around for floppy hats and canes whenever we went into town for anything.”  
“So what do you think I should be?” he asked her.  
“You? Let's see—how about the dark prince? The dark knight, rather? Not like Prince Hamlet, but something more. The man who's a little bit regal with his long mane of luxurious hair and his deep, soulful eyes upon a full moon of a face. He rides at night with the wind at his back and mirrors over his eyes as he skirts his way around the River Styx. He is a gentleman and he is sexy at the same time. He gives himself away with just one flick of the wrist and yet there's something about him that is still hidden. The bombshell wants him, but for all the wrong reasons. He is the dark knight.”  
A low grumble emerged from his stomach right at that moment. He rested a hand upon his belly and she knitted her eyebrows at him.  
“You're hungry again?” she demanded.  
“Yes. Welcome to my wide, wide world, Sonia. I mean, you did say something about me is still hidden after all.”


	108. Chapter 108

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I’m afraid of Americans,  
> I’m afraid of the world.  
> I’m afraid I can’t help it,  
> I’m afraid I can’t.”  
> -”I’m Afraid of Americans (Nine Inch Nails Mix)”, David Bowie

Lars awoke to his laying flat on his back in Sonia's bed. He lay there with nothing more than his eyes open just enough so as to make out the ceiling overhead. He could feel his body aching with every breath; even though he knew he had a round the night before with her, he still felt sore given its extent of roughness.  
He sat upright in hopes to recollect what he had experienced the night before. All he could recall was a bit of filthy dirty talk and then she pinched him as he lowered his hips down towards her, and then he fell onto autopilot after that because Sonia moved into rather hard territory with her belt and her spanking his ass with an oven mitt. His back ached and his hips felt far more sore than his first day of tennis training upon coming to America. He groaned from the pain but then his head throbbed near the front.  
He turned his head to see her laying on her other side, facing away from him, her T-shirt gone and her brown curls pulled back from the side of her neck like a bouquet of ribbons: her forearm blocked the view of her breasts so all he could see was her rib cage and the side of her flat stomach.  
Lars slipped his fingers under his bangs to massage his forehead followed by his temples. He glanced down at his body, bare naked except for the top of the bed sheet covering him. No bruises or scratches appeared in his skin, but he still ached and felt sore: he felt like ground beef, tenderized by a heavy metal mallet before receiving a series of chopping from a fine bladed knife. He rubbed his sinewy upper arms with either hand as if he was cold, and then he moved his hands to his chest and his belly: he tugged the blanket down from his torso to take a better look at his waist, which still poked out from his body in the form of a soft, silky round little roll underneath a thick slab of flesh.  
Sonia had scratched him next to his belly button, a pair of surface level scratches glaring back at him from next to his stretch marks, which had faded and became part of his skin.  
He grimaced at the sight of the scratches and then he glanced down at the love handles over his hips, which stung from the inside. On the inside?  
Every squeeze of his fingers on his flesh, a sensation that he and the one doing it otherwise loved, sent a shock of deep pain over his hip.  
“What did you do to me last night, Sonia,” he muttered, turning his head back to her. He had hurt his neck somehow as well because the nape of his neck twinged from a pulled muscle: he clasped a hand to the back of his neck and then he pushed off the sheet.  
He was so sore he almost rolled out of bed.  
The sole parts of his body that did not ache from that sore muscle pain were his feet: she had left his feet alone while his ankles and his thighs quivered and twitched from more sore muscles.  
Lars glanced down to see his naked body and the floor, which beheld no sign of his underwear or his clothes.  
His back stiff and in pain, he staggered out of the room and to the bathroom to take a better look at himself in the mirror.  
Aside from the dark streak underneath his right eye, nothing peculiar stuck out to him. It took him a moment to realize the dark streak was a bruise. She had given him a black eye, albeit a minor one.  
He turned the cold water dial on the faucet and held the palms of his hands under the trickle of water. He snapped his eyes shut and held his breath as he splashed it twice over his skin and his hair; after the third time, he switched off the water and gasped. He opened his eyes with a slight pause before pushing his bangs back from his face.  
Something caught his eye: he glanced down at the dark red abrasion the size of a penny on the inside of his right knee, one that appeared to be a rug burn but no pain emerged from that mark, even when he touched it with two fingers.  
Voices downstairs caught his ear; he reached up for a clean towel on the rack next to the sink and wrapped it around his waist before stepping back out to the hall. He padded downstairs to see Marcia and Kim from Soundgarden sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking about something. Her face lit up when she recognized Lars entering the room.  
“There he is,” she said aloud; Kim turned around to give him a nod.  
“Yeah, here I am—where are my clothes?”  
“Your clothes are all in the living room,” she pointed towards the front of the house. Kim noticed the scratches on Lars' belly button and knitted his eyebrows at the sight.  
“What the hell happened to you?” he demanded.  
“That's what I am trying to figure out,” Lars confessed, rubbing his temple again. “My head hurts. My head REALLY hurts. Everything hurts, actually, save for the soles of my feet.”  
He noticed Marcia had not changed out of her baking uniform: she had removed her apron but she looked as though she had arrived home not long before then.  
“What time is it?” he asked her.  
“What time is it? It's eleven fifteen. I got off work early to go up to Seattle this afternoon to meet up with Sandra for about a week. We'll be getting started on a Smell the Magic in the Ballard neighborhood. I'm just hanging out here because my sister's still asleep and Kim was in town to business as usual for himself, and so I invited him home for a cup of joe.”  
“Jesus—what the hell happened last night—” Lars massaged his forehead once more. Marcia tilted her head to the side to make out the mark underneath his eye.  
“Did you get punched in the face or something? What the fuck.”  
“Gah—I am going to get dressed. Then I shall try to connect the dots.”  
His body in agony, he padded out of the kitchen and into the living room to fetch a change of clothes out of his overnight bag. Given he was the only one in the room, he changed into clean underwear and black jeans, followed by his Venom shirt. He fixed his hair by sliding it out from his shirt collar and then he climbed to his feet, albeit without wincing and stretching out his arms to ease the aches and pains inside of him. He then returned to the kitchen for a cup of coffee himself and perhaps a bite to eat.  
“So how long are you going to be in Seattle again?” he asked Marcia upon returning to the room and heading to the cupboard for a clean mug.  
“A week,” she replied, taking a sip. He then turned around to face her straight on.  
“A week?”  
“Yeah. Why, you gotta be on tour then?”  
“I do, yes.”  
“Not a problem. Kim and I can take you to the airport on the way there in a bit. For now, though, make yourself comfortable.”  
“Yeah, I'm starting to get in pain just looking at you, man,” Kim confessed as Lars returned to the counter, stiff like a broken marionette, to pour himself some of the coffee and then the keraph of cream on the tiles before him.  
He leaned against the edge of the counter as the two of them conversed about Soundgarden making their first album with Sub Pop together.  
“So do you guys have a name for it?” she asked Kim.  
“The album?”  
“Yeah.”  
“We came up with a myriad of names from Warrant to Bat Skull Fuck Dick.”  
Lars burst out into a fit of high pitched giggles at that second name, and Kim flashed him a big goofy smile.  
“You liked that, don't you?”  
“Fucking hell, that's more hilarious than anything we've ever come up with!”  
Kim tossed his black hair back with the tips of his fingers as he beamed at both Lars and Marcia, and then he set his arms back down on the top of the table and his hands around the base of his mug.  
“We did come up with an appropriate name, though,” he concluded, his big smile fading, “the name Ultramega OK.”  
“OK? Just OK? Not maybe?” Marcia teased.  
“It just… slipped out and stuck in place.”  
Lars shifted his weight and bent his spine back so as to ease the pain on his muscles. His mind was all but a painful blur: he massaged his temple once more but the pain persisted.  
Within time, the three of them had downed their coffee and Lars tumbled into the back seat of Marcia's car with his overnight bag next to him there on the seat. He had no idea where he had misplaced his mirrored sunglasses there in the house and thus he decided to find a new pair, and perhaps a second one given they were Jerry's sunglasses.  
Once they reached the airport, Marcia stepped out of the car with Lars to see him off: upon his climbing out of the back seat in agony, she put her arm around him.  
“Are you going to be alright? Do you need some ibuprofen or something?” she asked him.  
“I can ask around for some,” he assured her, his head pounding and the muscles along his spine aching. He pulled back to look at her straight in the face. “What about Sonia? What is she going to do while you are up there?”  
“Oh, she can hang out with Ashley,” she pointed out. “I'll also call her when I get up there. You get going and take care of yourself.”  
She gave him one more embrace before he headed into the airport, alone, with nothing more than his clothes on his back and just enough money in the front pocket of his other jeans for a plane ticket. But once he asked for the flight times back to San Francisco, he found he had to wait for almost three hours until the next flight arrived.  
And thus he decided nothing better to do than to search about the airport for something to ease the aches and pains in his body. He soon found this to be a terrible idea because all he could find were strange onlookers who mistook him for a woman and albeit one addicted to pain pills. He returned to the gate headed to San Francisco and tried his best to relax in those uncomfortable plastic chairs near the terminal: the back of the chair sent more waves of pain over his aching body. He attempted to swing his legs around on over the right arm of the chair in hopes of laying down but the edge of the left arm dug into his back and proved to be incredibly uncomfortable: his neck extended too far back upon intending to make himself more comfortable and thus he could hardly breathe.  
Lars returned to an upright position, his chest heaving and his body aching from whatever it was Sonia did to him the night before. He slouched down so his knees raised up and his feet rested firm and flat upon the floor next to his overnight bag.  
The pain subsided as he slouched a bit more so his chin rested on top of the collar of his shirt. Then the pains disappeared once he almost lay flat on the seat of the chair. It was an otherwise seemingly uncomfortable position but it did indeed help matters.  
In fact, he dozed off at one point, and when he awoke, more and more people had congregated near him to board the plane, and he figured the time was at hand. He pushed himself off of the bottom of the seat and the bones in his neck let out a string of cracking sounds, all of which sent a momentary wave of relief down his back. He gasped in relief, only for it to be replaced by his clasping his hands to his back again. Everyone began to file into the terminal and thus, he scooped up his things and ducked into the line to board the plane.  
All the while, his body continued to ache in all of its soreness. Even when he finally sat down in the plush seat near the entrance to first class, he still breathed hard from the pain.  
The flight took all of an hour and a half, and not one point during that time did Lars find a way to relieve himself; not even when he returned to his car with the Deep Purple and Heart and Soul: Copenhagen stickers in the rear window. At that point, the sun hung low over the ocean and the incoming bank of dense fog, and the blue sky overhead painted a rich royal blue followed by bright yellow and soft orange.  
He almost couldn't bear the pain of his muscles a second longer as he drove around the winding road into the hills and towards his little house. On one side of him stood the incoming darkness from the ocean but the very sight proved enough to keep him moving in the face of his aching body and his flagging energy. Soon, he recognized his night light in the driveway, as it began to bathe the pavement in the pale yellow light, and he parked there on the concrete before his garage door. Once he switched off the car, he reached underneath the collar of his shirt to massage his shoulder blade and the nape of his neck. He closed his eyes to take in the feeling for a brief moment before climbing out of the car.  
He clutched his back as he padded down the driveway to his mailbox: he peeked inside to find a stack of letters laying there bound by a piece of twine. A hand written note lay on top and he picked it out to better read it:

“Son-  
Your mother and I managed to keep an eye your mail while you were away. All of the important things are in the kitchen… the mailbox kept getting so full! Look at some of these letters, though—the ones on top are almost as if they were brought in bulk by a thief in the night because they weren't here last night. You will thank me later.  
Dad”

He took out the stack and closed the lid before heading back up to his front step: he decided to fetch his things later on that evening. Lars unlocked the door and took in the fresh cool feeling on the inside of the house before collapsing on the couch with the stack still in hand. He leaned against the back of the couch as he untied the twine to see the first envelope on top: a light pink envelope beholding his address and the return both in bright blue ink. The very sight of the letter caused him to flick it to the floor as if he had been burned.  
He checked the next one, another pink envelope with bright blue ink. Then the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that. He couldn't believe he was looking at them, piled there on the floor by his feet, a light pink nightmare that would have made his heart sing otherwise. His chest heaved from the pains in his body, or from the sight before him. He turned his head at the sight of his front door still standing wide open and beholding the deep pink sky of the sunset out there.  
His back and neck continuing to ache, he leaned over to count out seven of them, but he felt it was seven too many.  
Seven too many from Mia.


	109. Chapter 109

Lars' body ached as he climbed to his feet and made his way back to the car to fetch his things. He almost collapsed back into the living room with his bag over his shoulder; he shut the door behind him as he set the overnight bag down on the floor. His back stiff, he stepped towards the lamp next to the couch which in turn bathed the room in warm golden yellow light. He plopped down on the couch and gazed at the letters.  
His whole body ached from everything, and his head throbbed with pain from a lack of water, or something else.  
One hand beheld Sonia and her presence with him as he tried to overcome everything that had happened between him and Mia. But then again, Mia had her way with him, and seeing her with Trent the day before brought enough tears to his eyes. He wondered if she intended to do that, or if she was trying to move on by going with Mikayla's old boyfriend, and he just so happened to stumble upon that park bench. But on another hand, if he returned to Sonia, he could imagine more hatchets and sharp objects pointed at both of their heads. As much as he liked Sonia, his relationship with her was dangerous, especially if he was going to be a one time opportunity with her.  
But there was Mia's husband and his sense of violence.  
He had no idea what to do other than stop arguing with himself and find what she wanted to say to him. It was clear to him that she made a great effort to make those envelopes and compile not one, not two, but seven letters to him.  
His back twinged and ached from the pain in his muscles as he leaned forward to the carpet. Without standing up, he picked up the letters and set them down on the couch cushion next to him. Nervous, and with a gentle but persistent growl in his stomach, he picked up the one on top. The pink paper making up the envelope felt light and delicate, like tissue paper, or rather like his skin. She had sealed the closing flap on the back of the envelope with a sticker in the shape of a black heart. Careful so as not to tear the paper, he stuck the tips of his index and middle fingers in between the black heart and the paper, and opened the letter: the mixed aromas of spicy cumin, earthy tequila, and a kiss of chocolate greeted him upon opening.  
That lovely mixture reminiscent of her signature donuts ridden upon the sheet of soft butter yellow paper: the hunger in his stomach morphed into nausea within time.  
He unfolded the letter to read her neat cursive penmanship in black ink:

“Lars-  
The first thing I want to say is I have never meant to hurt you in any way possible. I know for a fact that you are angry with me and you have every right to feel that way. You have every right to look at me and continue saying that I am full of shit. I mean, if you want to be angry with me for the rest of your life, then that is your choice. But if you are going to feel angry towards me, and lick the wounds covering your heart, at the very least find it in your broken heart to forgive me, please, baby. Please. Forgive me.  
Next, I lied about my marriage because I wanted you all for myself. When you walked into that bakery, I found myself captivated by you. You were the most beautiful boy I had ever seen—such a stark contrast from my pig of a husband. Your long beautiful hair, so lush and lovely in my hands and entwining through my fingers. Your bangs, light and feathery, and your lips, so soft and silken like the plumpest and ripest of raspberries under the balmy Puerto Rican sun. Your body is a work of art, all lush and sensual with those extra pounds holding onto it and giving it love.  
I miss rubbing your gorgeous belly when he feels nice and full, and I miss kissing your face. I have no doubt that our round in your shower was indeed the hottest moment of our relationship. I miss seeing you all soaking wet and lovely.  
My husband was such a disgusting, vile pig of a man. I have a hard time calling him a man, whereas I will call you a man for as long as I may live. He never helped me—that's why I work two jobs—and he always hurt me. He never thanked me and he always forced me to cook my Puerto Rican dishes when I didn't feel like it or I wanted to make something American. You know those wounds all over my body? They are from him. They are all from him. I neglected telling you because I worried about you knowing the truth. I worried about you. I lied to protect you from him.  
But I have nothing to hide now. The cat is out of the bag and the lock has broken off of the vault door. You need the truth. We all need the truth.  
Please believe me, my love. You must believe me. I am in tears writing this right now. You must see my side of things.  
You are my obsession and my interest. I wake up every day knowing you are alive and you have such a beautiful disposition to you. But I also wake up every day to the empty spaces, the one next to me on my bed where you used to sleep, and the one inside of my heart. Not even baking or styling hair can fill the gaping void inside of me, the one that opened up after that night in the hotel room when you looked at me with tears in your eyes.  
Again, you can always feel angry at me. But I will always want you back here with me. Seeing you cry will always haunt me. I want to make your lips glisten, but never your eyes. I will always want to feel you by my side again, to feel the smooth butter that is your skin under my hand. I will always want to bask in your beauty again. I will always want you. Please... forgive me. Forgive me. You don't ever have to feel the desire in your heart or in your belly or in your testicles ever again, but please forgive me.  
All of my love,  
Mia”

Lars set down the letter on his lap so he could reach up to either of his eyes to brush away the tears from his eyes. After what had happened to him the night before with Sonia, to see Mia wax poetic in the best way she could once again felt like a breath of fresh air. He pictured her with him there on the couch, massaging his body with lotion on her hands. How he wanted to feel her lips again.  
And he still remained in disbelief about the whole thing. He swore all of these were to win him back and he had no idea what to think or feel or make of these letters from her.  
He wiped his left eye, followed by his right eye with the back of his hand, and then picked up the next one. Once again, he slid his fingers underneath the black heart sealing back flap so as to not tear the envelope and was greeted by the beautiful aroma of cumin, chocolate, and tequila. He took out the next letter, once more on soft butter yellow parchment paper. He could hardly read her hand writing through his tears, but he managed to extrapolate a particular passage:

“You must believe what I am telling you. I feel dry without you, and not dry how you would leave me feeling whenever we made love to each other.  
There was something that happened to me, Ashley, and Sonia on the night I faked my death. Wayne was home, at the blue and white house, my house, to make sure I was in one piece and I confessed to him I was cheating on him. And yes, he became angry with me.  
He glared at me right in the face and said, and I quote, 'if I even smell Lars again, I will bury the two of you.' How he even knew your name is beyond me but that was how I ended it with him, by telling him the truth and then going to Ashley's house to fake my death in order to get away from him, because I would do anything for you, even die for you.  
Please, please, forgive me. I am begging you, on my hands and knees and without a drop of Danish crème to drink.”

He parted his lips reading that next to last paragraph again, and then another two more times. He sniffled and wiped his eyes again.  
“So she faked her death not only to be with me,” he concluded aloud, his voice breaking, “but to run away from him. She was trying to run from him.”  
He read on:

“He pushed me, and pushed me, and pushed me, but he was pushing me right into your arms.”

“He pushed me, and pushed me, and pushed me, but he was pushing me right into your arms,” he repeated it aloud. He set the letter down on the arm of the couch next to him. The pain in his body had no match for the heavy feeling in his chest, or the hunger inside of his stomach, the latter of which he could not tolerate a second longer.  
Lars hoisted himself to his feet and hurried into the kitchen for something, anything.  
He opened the refrigerator with haste and spotted the milk carton near the back of the shelf before his face. He screwed off the lid for two large gulps, and then lowered the carton, his chest heaving all the while. It wasn't something solid, but it was indeed something. He returned the lid to the top and the carton to the shelf before closing the door. In the golden light from the living room, he spotted a hand written sticky note there on the refrigerator door in front of him.

“Miss Mia is safe with me and Dave. Don't you worry about a thing, my Danish friend.  
-Trent”

Lars wiped another tear from his eye before returning to the living room to read the rest of that letter. He picked it up and blinked back the tears.

“Please, baby, papacito, my love, the love of my life. Please forgive me for wrecking you. You gave me your big beautiful heart and your gorgeous body, and I destroyed the former and made the latter feel ugly and used. Please forgive me. I am begging you. Wayne doesn't even know I'm still alive, either, so please.”

He clasped a hand to his mouth as he staggered back to the front door. Everything he felt for her roared back inside of him right then, especially when he took another glimpse over at the note from Trent. He continued on:

“Please, baby. Please. I am in tears writing this right now, darling. Please forgive me.  
I want you to know that, from the bottom of my heart and from the interior of my nauseated stomach, I would die for you. I even said it out loud as I feigned killing myself: I am ready to die for you.  
I will always love you. I love you. I LOVE YOU! TE AMO! JEG ELSKE DIG!”

“I love you, too,” he whimpered aloud, “—but I do not know if I am ready to die for you. Jeg ved ikke, om jeg er klar til at dø for dig.”  
He pressed his back to the door panel and slid down to the floor. He buried his face in his hands and wept for himself and for her.


	110. Chapter 110

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Deep within this frame of mine  
> Heart of hearts a valentine  
> Tell my mom I'm doing fine  
> Doing fine, doing fine...  
> Skin and bones.”  
> -”Skin and Bones”, Foo Fighters

The next week carried the same weight as a heavy fog day in San Francisco as Lars tried to pick up the pieces of everything he had known up to that point. Mia indeed helped him question everything, but it was nothing on this sort of level.  
He awoke in his bed on the morning before he had to leave again for New Orleans, continuing to feel sore and broken by the night with Sonia, or perhaps it was from the lack of sincere touch on his flesh that brought him all of the aches and pains inside of him. He had no feeling, no desire to much of anything. He even lost the desire to practice on his kit out in the garage. He merely lay on his side under his bed sheet with his hands, laying limp, out from his body. The fingers on his left hand curled back towards the palm of his hand.  
He felt old, as if time itself aged him a thousand years. A feeling that no soul, male or female, could reverse.  
He neglected to eat anything over the course of the day: in fact, not one time did his stomach tell him he was hungry. He lay there in bed, all alone, staring up at the ceiling, and feeling cold and empty. No sign of nourishment or the lifting of gray hung in sight for him: the sun perforating the clouds outside of his window did not suffice to break the gray surrounding him.  
When he finally did climb out of bed, it was to check his messages for anything important. Nothing. Left with nothing, but silence and the quiet beep of the answering machine.  
Lars slouched back to his bedroom in hopes to ease the pains in his body. He lay back down at stared down at his bare belly, once a little round and quite erotic, once a lovely little well fed silky bump on the middle of his body, now a tired, depleted pile of flesh on top of even more tired flesh.  
How he wanted to climb out of this gray haze, this cold feeling surrounding and enveloping him. He stared up at the ceiling and wished for some kind of feeling, any kind of feeling. He flashed back on Mia's letters to him and how she was willing to do anything for him, and ultimately, for the two of them. She did it for the two of them, and he blew it. How he wished to get away from himself, to climb out of his own flesh and seek a new body, one that was perfect, one that was lovable. He then followed up the thought with a wish for something more than the need to move away from himself.  
And yet his flesh and bones were riddled with fatigue, a constant dullness that only sank further and further into his bones until it was almost unbearable. Mia had robbed his mouth of kisses and Sonia had left his body battered and bruised. Nothing had been left behind other than a young man under the dead weight of cold.  
Something tugged at the pit of his stomach. He groaned inside of his throat. He need not feel something like that inside of him but something else, something different. But it persisted.  
Lars rolled his head over the top of his pillow as he tried to fight it off. The feeling continued, a deep dig feeling as if it was honeycombing right in the pit of his stomach. Nausea held no weight to this feeling: now he was met with pain. That firmly rooted sharp pang emerging from inside of his belly, indicative of not eating any solid food for almost two straight days. It seared so hard and so deep, he swore someone stabbed him again, but with a hatchet this time and to the middle of his body as opposed to his left eye.  
He rolled over onto his side and pulled his knees up towards his chest and folded his arms over his waist. He lay there, grimacing, and his breath shortening with each pulsation of the pang: subsiding for a few seconds before returning in all intensity and all sharpness.  
It persisted again and again, until he finally could not bear another moment with it. He rolled out of bed and staggered out of his room. He almost crawled into the kitchen, he felt so thin and weak.  
Lars stared up at the note on the refrigerator door, the note from Trent, still clinging to the front of the cold metal. For a second, he believed it to taunt him there on the linoleum. But as he read that writing again and again, there came a change of thought.  
Mia was safe with Trent and Dave. If anything happened there, they could protect her from her crazed ex-husband, not that they needed to do such a thing given he had no idea she was still alive.  
He flashed back on one of the lines from her second letter to him: “if I even smell Lars again, I will bury the two of you.” He thought about what he smelled like at that moment. Sweat? Unless he played while feeling rather hungry, which nulled by the time Mia entered the picture, not really. Cologne? Only on certain nights, and they were incredibly few and far in between.  
He gripped onto the handle of the refrigerator door and searched for something, anything, to put into his mouth and ease the pains on his stomach. His body aching, he managed to climb up onto his knees and open the meat drawer. That bag of pastrami faced him straight on: it had been in there for a while, and he knew the meat needed to be eaten. It was a fair amount, a little more than half a pound. Oh, to go back when he could down a half of a pound of food in one sitting with ease.  
But he needed something and that caught his eye first. He took the bag out of the drawer and, without closing the refrigerator door, he sat down on the floor before the door of the cupboard next to it. He unzipped the bag only to be greeted by the peppery smell of the pastrami: another smell he missed. He reached in for the first slice and held it before his mouth.  
He stuck out his tongue to taste it.  
That old feeling once again.  
He dangled the slice over his mouth and nibbled on the end. Black pepper greeted the top of his tongue and that smoked taste hit him right square in the back of the mouth. He missed the flavor so much that he took another nibble, followed by another, and another, and another, and then he shoved the whole slice into his mouth. He could hardly swallow it faster as he reached in for another slice, and another, and another.  
“I'm back,” he announced with his mouth full; he swallowed it down as he reached in for more. “Lars is back, baby.”  
He could not eat the pastrami faster given how little he had eaten those past two days.  
Soon he finished the bag of sliced pastrami and then climbed to his feet to dispose of in the bin there in the kitchen. But the feeling itself proved to be not enough. He returned to the refrigerator for something else; he spotted the remainder of the baby Swiss cheese in the same drawer, and picked it up to eat it in its entirety. There lay another little bit of cheese in the same drawer, one of Monterey jack: he shoved that into his mouth as well.  
He picked up a container of sour cream, filled halfway, and drank down it as if was water. He took the rest of the milk carton and drank that down as well.  
He took out the partial bag of baby carrots from the vegetable drawer and shoveled them all into his mouth. He spotted a half of a smørrebrød wrapped in cellophane on the shelf before him, and he remembered the last time his parents brought some over. They must have known he was coming home soon, because he could not break the rye bread smeared with butter, more pastrami, a bit of roasted chicken, mozzarella, and brown mustard free from its hiding place.  
“Oh, mother!” he cried out, overjoyed, and he bit down on the sandwich as if it was about to escape him. He ate it all up in four large bites, all of which couldn't reach his agonized stomach faster.  
Soon, he shut the refrigerator door and opened the freezer before his knees. He had forgotten about the half gallon bucket of chocolate ice cream there.  
“Eat you fat fuck,” he muttered to himself, taking the bucket out and shut the door with his knees. He reached into a nearby drawer for a spoon and just proceed to eat at it, spoonful by spoonful. Lars dug at the ice cream and shoveled in bite after bite, letting it melt in his mouth before it slid down his throat into his stomach. A little bit dripped onto his chin and his chest but he could care less at that time.  
The pangs in his stomach waned away with each and every bite of ice cream. By the time he came close to the bottom of the bucket, the band on his shorts had tightened around his waist. He set down the bucket on the floor next to him so as to hold onto the waist band and tug it down. He stared down at his belly, still tired and worn out, and the scratches about his belly button still glared back at him, but he knew he did well right then.  
“Oh—Oh, yes,” he breathed out, stretching out his legs and resting his hands on his belly. “Yeah, that's better. That is a lot better.”  
He had nothing more to do that evening except go to bed early for the flight early the next morning. He cleaned himself in the bathroom before returning to his bedroom: he lay in bed on his side with his stomach carrying that nice warm feeling he had longed for all this time.  
Lars early awoke the next morning, and did not bother with a shower first before leaving for the airport with his overnight bag, two of Mia's letters, and his black leather book.  
He was the first to board the plane, and soon James, Kirk, and Jason arrived in the seats behind him there in first class, thus he had an empty seat next to him.  
When no one paid any attention to him, he opened another one of Mia's letters, and out tumbled a Polaroid. He picked it up from his lap to find it was of her. She had removed all of her clothes and posed next to her thigh high boots with her arm up to an overhead lamp behind her. He scrambled to scoop up the photograph before anyone saw it for it themselves. He held it up to his chest like he would a hand in poker, and lifted it toward his face. He eyed the shape of her hips and the hourglass shape he had fallen in love with: she, too, had lost a fair amount of weight herself, just by looking at how much the love handles over her hips had slimmed down and removed a bit of the curvature of her body.  
Another photograph had stuck to the back of it: he peeled it off to find it of her, Trent, and Jerry, all three of them sitting on the couch in her house, all with acoustic guitars. On the edge of the Polaroid, she had written in tiny lettering “Get down, make love, Lars.”  
The intercom crackled on over their heads.  
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen—this is your captain speaking. The weather reports are showing us the formation of a category two hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. We will be making an emergency landing in Houston as any flights headed to New Orleans have been delayed or canceled. We ask that you buckle your seat belts. Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience.”  
Quite early in the season for a hurricane, or a tropical storm of any sort. But Lars set down the Polaroids on his lap so as to buckle into his seat. He reached up to rub his chin and noticed tiny bristles of hair growing about his face once again.  
His mind funk from the day before set him off schedule, and he thought about shaving after a shower once he set foot in his hotel room.  
He held onto the arms of his seat as the plane dipped down towards downtown Houston. He closed his eyes and wondered if Mia knew about them flying out to the Deep South for another round of shows. He hoped she knew about it as he had no other means of coming in contact with her aside from hearsay.  
They touched down in Houston at about ten thirty in the morning, and Lars lunged for the nearest coffee shop to tithe him over until he was able to find a driver of some sort to New Orleans. He recognized the tall lanky young man with a thick shrub of hair atop his head standing next to the counter with a muffin in his left hand: he held it in such a way that Lars noticed the wedding band on his third finger.  
“Ben!” he declared, and Ben Shepherd nodded at him.  
“There you are,” he greeted Lars in a gruff voice.  
“Yes—here—here I am,” he sputtered in response; he forgotten how much Ben towered over him, a long lanky radio tower of a boy with not a lick of fat on his body. His height alone intimidated him. “Here I am. Er—what are you doing here?”  
“Just flew out to see Soundgarden live with you boys. Wound up here 'cause the flight was delayed. And I thought you got your ass kicked.”  
He knitted his eyebrows together at the sound of that.  
“No?”  
“I swore you did, man. Like some big guy pulled you aside in Pike Place Market the day after my wedding and beat the holy shit out of you and put you in the hospital. That wasn't you?”  
“No.” Lars dared not mention Angela threatening to chop him up with a hatchet lest Ben deny it.  
“So how're you getting to New Orleans?” he asked Ben.  
“Me? I flew out here from Seattle about twenty minutes ago. Mark—you know Mark Lanegan—he's down here so I'll be hitching a ride with him there. What about you, since all the flights are canceled from the storm?”  
“Probably flag down a taxi. But it's hard to say given it's a category two.”  
“I'll try and see if Mark can give you a ride,” he confessed.  
“Oh, you will do that?”  
“Of course, man. I'm a punk—that's what punks do.” He showed him an assuring smile and Lars felt a tiny ray of comfort at its presence. He then stepped forward to ask for a latte and a blueberry scone. Once he paid the barista, he stepped to the nearest table next to the entrance and a woman using the payphone on the wall; Ben headed out of the shop to find another one before his order was up.  
Lars took out the second letter from his jeans pocket to read Mia's next letter. Given he was in a public place, he promised himself not to tear up again. Careful, he opened the envelope and took out another sheet of butter yellow paper, and read her cursive penmanship once again:

“Lars-  
I hope you are taking better care of your body than I am. After you left, I found myself walking the street of downtown Portland, searching for something to reason with my head. I ducked into the nearest restaurant for two double cheese burgers and two orders of fries. How I wanted you to be with me right then, not because I knew you would love it but because it was a lot of food for me.  
I returned home feeling bloated and heavy. I found out how you feel whenever you eat so much, except there was no one in the house to rub my belly for me. I merely lay there on the bed feeling all sluggish and fat from the greasy food. I overate for you. I overate because I had no one there next to me. I woke up knowing what I had done to myself. I had a plain ball of mashed plantains for breakfast—I didn't even throw in spices or a bit of fat to give it some more flavor.  
I miss your touch and your kisses. I miss the aroma of your skin and your hair. I miss your softness, holding onto your hips and giving your flesh a gentle squeeze.  
When I trimmed your bangs that one time, I knew it was utter bliss for you, but I loved massaging your head, moving my fingers about the curvature of the crown and seeing the water flow over those locks of hair and down into the sink. Then came the suds of soap. Then there was the gentle, placid expression upon your face, the expression of a man in euphoria as if he was experiencing an orgasm. Such intense pleasure, encapsulated upon your round, full face.  
I miss your face, too. I have grown so accustomed to it and the chubbiness of your cheeks and the flesh under your chin.  
I know you hate it, but for me, it was the full moon. The full moon illuminating the dark sky that had swept over my life from my terrible marriage. All full and soft. You are always a beautiful boy in my eyes. You are always the apple of my eye; your cheeks like plump little ripe apples, only growing fuller and rounder with every smile you flash at me. Perfect for kissing. When I said boys with round faces are so kissable, I meant it. I never wanted to stop kissing your face. The very thought of it gives me a fluttery feeling in my stomach.  
Everything I said to you I meant. Everything I said was true. I am sincere in everything, every word, every kiss, I feel about you.  
I miss talking about you with Marcia and Sonia, and I know they miss you, too. I have no idea what's going on between the two of them and Kirk, but I guess it hasn't been going too well with either of them. Marcia came to work yesterday limping and she told me Sonia and Kirk did it rather rough their last night together. I have no idea what's going on there with Marcia herself and him, either for that matter. Sonia has no idea what to do with you, either. She says there is a feeling there but it makes very little sense to her, if at all.  
I hope you go to bed tonight with a warm, sensual feeling in your tummy and with brushed hair. Since I am not there, I want you to rub your own belly when he feels full. I want you to feel soft whenever you take a shower. I want you to stay in touch with your senses and always be a man of pleasure. I want you to feel love again, and more importantly, love for yourself.  
All of my love,  
Mia”

He set down the letter on the table before turning around to take a look at the phone there near the entrance. He fetched up a sigh and glanced over to the counter. It would be a bit before he had his latte in hand, and thus he stood to his feet and took out the bit of loose change in his pocket, left over from his buying the latte and the scone. He took a glimpse down at the floor for a second before sighing through his nose once again.  
“Cannot believe I am actually doing this,” he said aloud. He picked up the receiver, inserted a quarter into the coin slot, and dialed Mia's number. It rang three times, and then her answering machine picked it up.  
“Mia, hi—it's Lars. Er, listen. I got your letters—all of them.” His voice broke and he swallowed to keep himself from going too overboard. “I am in Houston right now. My flight to New Orleans has been delayed. If and when I get to my hotel room, I will call you again. It is… very important that I do so. I will speak to you soon and I hope you have a good day today.”  
He hung up and let out a long low whistle before returning to his table.


	111. Chapter 111

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You gave me promises,  
> why don't you feel the same?  
> (I'm sad, I feel like a little child,   
> Somebody left, there is no rain)”  
> -”Rain”, Guano Apes

Lars climbed into Mark's truck right as the torrential rain fell upon the Houston airport. He ducked into the front seat next to Mark, who had wrapped himself up in a bright yellow slicker and set a near black boonie hat upon his head. Lars peered out the windshield at the darkening sky.  
A hurricane for my love, he thought to himself. A hurricane with hard rain and thunder and lightning, all for my love.  
Ben lumbered into the back seat behind him; the very feel of his knees pressed against the back of the seat sent a whirlwind of butterflies throughout Lars' stomach. The memory of Angela brandishing that hatchet still hung fresh within his mind: the thought of it terrified him more than Mia's husband wanting to kill him. The one thing that stumped him about that was his threat of burying the two of them if he even smelled Lars again.  
Mark started up the truck right as thunder clapped across the sky; Lars continued to look out the window at the sight of the menacing storm clouds stretching across the sky. It was still morning, and yet it grew as dark as night here in the southern United States. He sighed through his nose as he had no idea they would arrive to New Orleans if all of the roads had closed from the incoming storm surge: he had told James, Kirk, and Jason about his ride right as they found rides for themselves. Perhaps they could all be caught up in the same flood together, even if they all stopped on different spots on the highway.  
They turned out of the parking lot, and Mark flicked on the windshield wipers at the first big fat splatters of rain upon the plexiglas. The streets of Houston were all but deserted as everyone strived to leave town or seek shelter before the hurricane arrived. Mark found his way to the nearest onramp of the highway to New Orleans and they sped down the pavement in the face of the strengthening rain.  
A bright bolt of lightning streaked across the sky right before them, an elongated bright white stripe with two pronged branches so as to represent a trident.  
Lars thought back to one of his encounters with Mia and it baffled him as to how he recalled asking her if she was ready to ride the lightning. He started to wonder if he was ready to ride the lightning for himself.  
Another clap of thunder followed, and then a curtain of hail stones embedded within the rain.  
“Jesus,” Mark muttered aloud.  
“I hope the roads aren't closed,” Ben added; Lars felt him shift his weight and pull his knees back from the seat a bit before shoving them back into the base of the seat.  
“We can hope that, man. I'm more worried about these damn hail stones beating the hell out of my truck.”  
Lars paid no attention to their conversation as he peered out the window next to him and the streaks of rain across the glass. He ran his fingers through the hair on the side of his head before clasping his hand to the side of his neck. He fondled the creases upon his skin, and he swore they were deepening.  
He was losing too much weight. He needed another night like the one before and simply eat everything he could find before him at the hotel. But the sight of the rain and the hail pummeling against the glass forced him to wonder if and when he found that chance again.  
Puddles formed along the side of the road: in between the streaks of rain, he watched them grow larger and larger to where they choked the storm drains on the side of the highway. Lars swallowed at the sight of them, and then again as the trees and the buildings gave way to behold the sight of the bay holding back the Gulf and its raging waters. He wondered about the strength of those levies as they passed a illuminated sign on the side of the road.  
“What'd that say?” asked Ben.  
“The road to Lafayette to New Orleans—the southbound road, Highway Ninety, that is—is closed from the surge,” Mark pointed out. “Means we're going to have to take the long way to the Big Easy.”  
“Still early, though,” Lars chimed in.  
“Yeah, it's still morning,” Mark agreed, “but this beastie is coming in fast. We're about another three hundred miles out before we can see Pontchartrain before us. Do you boys know where you're both staying?”  
“Yeah, the same hotel,” said Ben.  
“That's convenient. And hopefully check in time is later in the day, too, because I don't see us making it before the onset of nightfall.”  
The rain and hail pounded hard on the roof of the truck while another bolt of lightning seared the dark sky overhead and thunder shook the road.  
Lars sank down in the passenger seat with his arms folded over his stomach, but he wasn't cold. He had eaten that scone before leaving the Houston airport, but he wondered how long it would last him for the road straddling along the border of the low swamp lands to the left becoming saturated and the raging waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the right. He dared not imagine himself trying to outswim a biblical flood on an empty stomach and he wondered if the two men next to him could do that for themselves.  
By the time they crossed the state line into Louisiana, and the hurricane still lingered off of the coast line, Lars felt his ears pop from the drop in pressure. It was at hand. He swallowed again, but this time at the thought that the road before them could flood so much, they would have to remain there on the pavement until the storm passed; whenever it passed.  
He thought of the phone call he made to Mia back in the airport, and he wondered about the next one he could make at the hotel; if he could make another call to her. The very thought of it all brought more force to the butterflies inside of his stomach, and he pressed his forearms closer to his belly in hopes to comfort him.  
He wanted to tell Mark he didn't feel good but he had no idea if he had the opportunity to do such a thing. At least he wasn't carsick.  
Lars unfolded his arms to give his belly a massage with his hands. It lacked the same gentle feeling of someone else doing it for him, but it helped ease the discomfort inside of him.  
The windshield wipers could hardly keep up with the pouring rain, which formed small rivers upon the glass of the windshield in front of him and Mark. Lars flashed back on the time he and Mia traveled to Astoria and torrential rain slammed her car. But this was the outside of a hurricane and not a regular bout of winter rain on the coast of Oregon.  
How he wanted a belly rub right then, and not from himself.  
Although the roads never closed from the overflowing swamps to the left and the struggling levies to the right, the three hundred miles along the bottom of Louisiana were agonizing for Lars. His stomach ached from hunger and from the fear of succumbing to the power of the hurricane. He promised to call Mia again: he promised her. If he found no way to the hotel, or a phone of some sort, he broke his promise to her.  
The rain eased up somewhat by the time they reached the capital city of Baton Rouge, but even there, from the highway, they could see the roads flooding with murky rain water and hail stones.  
Lars sank down inside of his seat and tried to not think of the flood, but it was difficult given the water poured everywhere outside of the truck.  
“Apparently there's a leak,” Ben spoke out of the blue.  
Mark gasped; Lars closed his eyes and sighed.  
“There is? Where?”  
“Along the edge of the window right behind your head.”  
Just like the leaky window pane in Lars' car. He felt the truck turn to the right onto a gentle curve and the rain pummeled the truck even more than ever at that point. He sat upright to examine the road before them and to ease the incoming spinning sensation on his head: a thin layer of water covered the pavement in front of the truck, and he had no idea if that was enough water to bring a closure of the road. He turned to Mark, who appeared calm despite of the dripping leak behind his head and the relentless downpour outside.  
“How far are we from New Orleans?” he asked Mark.  
“How far?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Eighty miles, I think? Yeah, eighty miles. I could see it on that sign back there. It's alright, though. We're making good time and it looks like the swamps are holding up okay—”  
Lars swallowed again because he knew that Mark had no idea what was happening on either side of the road. He peered out his window at the sight of the tall, rugged trees consisting of the swamps so distinctive of Louisiana fighting against the rain and hail. A hard gust of wind pounded against the hood of the truck and Lars sank back into his seat at the feeling.  
Now he was afraid. They headed right into the heart and soul of a hurricane and the one thing he had to reassure him was the sight of the red tail lights of the cars in front of them reflecting onto the drenched pavement. Mark slowed down the truck a bit at the sight of the traffic before them and the feel of the strong winds pressing against them. Lars eyed the clock on the dashboard: almost three o'clock in the afternoon, and it already appeared that night had fallen upon all of Louisiana bayou from the black sky.  
“I wonder how Chris, Kim, Hiro, and Matt are doing right now,” said Ben, once again out of the blue.  
“I'm sure they're doing alright,” answered Mark; and Lars thought about James, Kirk, and Jason and their whole crew at that moment. Granted, he had paid very little attention to the traffic before them, but he wondered if they were ahead of them on the road. He hoped the roads remained open until they reached the hotel outside of the French Quarter. He ran a hand through his hair again when Mark spoke up once more.  
“How's that leak doing?”  
There was a brief pause.  
“Still going,” answered Ben. “It's not that bad, though—it's little dripping of rain water, but it's not a lot to soak the inside of the back seat here.”  
“Okay. Well, we really are not that far out of New Orleans. I'll drop you boys off and then I'll see if I can find a dry spot to check on that thing.”  
They fell back into silence, silence save for the continuous roar of the rain and wind against the truck.  
Soon, the sight of the raging black waters of the vast Lake Pontchartrain emerged out from behind the rivers on the windshield and the trees making up the swamps: the distant lights of New Orleans shone just enough to illuminate the tops of the short choppy waters and bring light to the ominous dark gray backdrop behind the city. They rounded the lake as the rain strengthened even more, so much that sheets of rain sailed over the pavement.  
Lars had never seen anything like it in his young life.  
But by the power of Mark's truck and his patience, they reached the outside of the French Quarter, buttoned down from the storm. Ben guided him to the tiny white inn where he and Lars were staying at together; and Mark bounded up to the curb before the front door. No trees or an awning of any sort were to be found, which meant the three of them had to duck out of the truck with nothing covering their heads.  
Lars climbed out first into the street and the hard winds. He shielded his face and his eyes with his arm as he shut the door and rounded the side of the truck to fetch his things from the bed, protected by the safety of the camper shell. Ben huddled behind him as he lifted the hatch and yanked his overnight bag out without hesitation.  
“Watch out! Watch out!” Ben shouted over the wall of cacophony around them. Lars took a glimpse down at the sight of the river, about a foot wide, forming in the storm drain before their feet. Braving it, he leapt over the murky, muddy waters onto the sidewalk; Ben followed suit right behind him.  
“You guys gonna be alright?” yelled Mark.  
“Yes!” Lars shrieked.  
“I'm gonna be down the block! You fellas get dry!”  
And with that, Lars and Ben sprinted into the little building, and Mark climbed back into the driver's seat. Lars flung open the front door and they found themselves in the small front lobby, which, despite the rain and wind, still managed to keep the lights on. He pushed back his wet hair and he and Ben greeted the young woman at the front desk as if everything was fine outside.  
Soon Lars found his way down the front hall to his room, and he was able to unlock the door and turn on the lamp on the table on the side of the room. Once he set down his things, he gave his wet hair another toss back from his face. He took a seat on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone. His hand trembled as he dialed her number.  
It rang twice, and then—  
“Hello?” The very sound of her voice tugged at his heart. So crisp and clear: he knew she was doing well.  
“Hello?” she repeated.  
“Hi,” he squeaked out, his voice breaking.  
“Lars?”  
“Yes.”  
“Hi. Hi, I—I just got home. How are you?”  
“Scared shitless because there's a hurricane down here. But I managed to make it to New Orleans.”  
“Are you drunk?” Strange thing to ask him.  
“No. I kind of do want a drink right now, but no. I am not drunk. Why do you ask?”  
“Just—curious. Are you there by yourself?”  
“Aside from Ben and Mark—Mark Lanegan—as far as I can tell, I am.”  
He swallowed again and he felt the hair on the side of his head starting to drip from the rain water.  
“I got all of your letters,” he confessed. “I just—I don't know what to say right now. Other than I miss you.” He closed his eyes and nibbled on his bottom lip.  
“I—I miss you, too,” she stammered.  
“And by 'miss you', I don't mean—” He cleared his throat. “—I don't merely mean missing you like how we missed each other whenever I was away and you were at home up there or I was somewhere else. I mean, I—I miss you. I really miss you.”  
“Are you okay?”  
“I am terrified. You know Ben's bride came after Sonia and me, right?”  
“She did!”  
“Yeah. About a week ago. I was at their house and she broke into their house and threatened to kill the two of us. She had a hatchet with her, too. It was a miracle Dave happened to be there because I—”  
He paused, feeling his stomach twist up into a tight knot.  
“—I probably would not be talking to you right now. Ben also told me that he thought I got my ass handed me the day following his wedding day.”  
“Really?” She sounded shocked.  
“Yeah, I don't understand it, either, because I left Seattle the day he got married.”  
“Well, that's—reassuring.”  
“Wait. You know about that, too?”  
“Yeah. Because I got a call that day from Liv saying my boyfriend was put in the hospital by my crazed ex-husband. By the way, when I told her and Mike that I cheated on him with you, they were not surprised at all.”  
“Makes sense. But she told you that?”  
“Yeah. The man described was your height with a round face and long brown hair. She said his eyes were swollen shut from bruising so they couldn't see his eyes, and I guess they just assumed it was you—that wasn't you?”  
“No. Shit, I had no idea he was coming after me until I read your letters.”  
There was a rustling noise on her end, and the rain on the roof over Lars' head persisted in a continuous drone.  
“Well—you stay dry, alright? I have to meet up with Trent in about twenty minutes. He and I hooked up after you and I broke up.” Lars' heart sank at the sound of that.  
“Okay—yes, I will. You two have a good night.”  
They hung up at the same time and Lars threw himself onto his back on the bed spread. A part of him wished the storm would yank the roof off of the hotel so he would not have to hear about Mia and Trent being together.


	112. Chapter 112

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “How many days can one man wonder,  
> How many years can one man carry on,  
> If I was tough, could my fist harness the thunder?  
> If I was stronger, could I roll these days along?”  
> -”How Many Days”, Kris Kristofferson

Despite having rubbed a towel over his head, his hair still dripped with rain water, and thus Lars wandered his way down the hall back to the front lobby in hopes to find a bar of some sort in there. He was in New Orleans, after all.  
The next room over from the lobby had a cluster of low square oak tables, each illuminated by a pair of red candles; on the other side of the room from the doorway stood another entrance to a dim lit corridor. He hesitated on one spot of the creaky wooden floor to take a closer look at the alcove near the far right corner, and he spotted the edge of a speedwell at the end of the bar. Eager to taste a cocktail of some sort, he padded over to the side of the bar, which stood stretched before him, the heavy oak panel polished to perfection, so much that the wood managed to shimmer in the candle light. Thunder rolled outside and the rain fell even harder upon the roof of the inn as he took his seat on the spindly bar stool next to a woman; he eyed her long salt and pepper hair stretched down to the middle of her back and her sallow skin, the latter of which appeared more pallid from the dim light.  
Lars scanned the display of wine and whisky bottles before him before taking a glimpse over at her and the glass of scotch in her hand.  
“Pardon me—” he started in a gentle tone, after clearing his throat; she turned to look at him with tired eyes upon a gaunt face. “Where did you get that?” He gestured at her glass and she pointed at the speedwell on the other side of the bar.  
“We're supposed to pour ourselves a glass?”  
She nodded her head.  
“The bartender's out 'cause of the storm,” she replied in a hoarse voice and with a heavy southern twang.  
“I see. Makes sense.”  
She took another drink before setting down her glass on the bar and reaching over to shake his hand.  
“I'm Ellen,” she introduced herself. “Ellen Ribaux.”  
“I'm Lars—Lars Ulrich.”  
“I like your accent. Not really an accent you hear 'round Nawlins. You European?”  
“Yes, I am. Born and raised in Denmark.”  
“Denmark! Wow. Never thought I'd meet anyone again after my marriage fell apart, much less a Danish man. But that's why I'm here and why I've got this glass with me.”  
Lars frowned and knitted his eyebrows at the sound of that.  
“You are drinking in order to cope?”  
“Exactly. I raised a daughter with my husband an' then I find he's leavin' me 'cause—accordin' to him, I couldn't give 'em what he wanted. They left fer California 'bout a week ago.”  
He flashed on Mia and Trent right at that moment, and wondered if she would leave with him for the same reason, because Lars refused to understand Mia's intent, that is until he received her letters after the fact.  
“Did you—try to save your marriage?” he asked Ellen, reluctant.  
“Oh, yeah. I tried everythin', hon. I even tried writin' love letters to him while he was away on business. I spent every day either at work or raisin' Gina, our daughter. None of that didn't even work. Why you ask?”  
He shifted his weight there on the stool. There was another clap of thunder outside, and the rain never changed pace.  
“You got a young lady bringin' you trouble?”  
“Well, it is a little more—complicated, I would say? More complicated than just that?”  
“Lars, listen to me,” said Ellen, turning in her seat so as to face him straight on. “I've been drinkin' and suckin' on my sorrows since the divorce was final at the start of this'n here year. And I can tell you if the cancer doesn't kill me soon, then my liver'll go out on me first. In fact, there's mausoleum nearby here where I think I'll just lie down on the swampy ground an' let this torrential rain take me back to the Lord's den. So I know—I know, even by not visitin' a doctor, that I don't have much time left anymore. Whatever it is that's eatin' at ya—I will take it to the grave with me. But I'll also tell ya what I know so you take it with ya back to Denmark or wherever you's staying at right now. And I can guarantee it, hon.”  
He swallowed and sighed through nose.  
“Her name is Mia,” he began, turning to stare right into Ellen's eyes which felt as though to sear right through him; he grimaced at the feeling of her gaze. “—she's Puerto Rican, but she lives in Oregon. And—I—am the other man.”  
“The other man?” She raised her sparse eyebrows. “She's married?”  
“Was,” he corrected. “She—faked her death so she could be with me. But see, I—I made the mistake of pushing her away.”  
“And pushin' her into another man's arms, I reckon.” Ellen turned her head and held onto the empty scotch glass by the base for a moment: she then lifted her hand to run the tip of her index finger around the rim.  
“Indeed. I am also a musician so there's the—the, er—” He took a glimpse down at the wooden floor. “—problem with distance. We live six hundred miles apart.”  
“Wow.” She knitted her eyebrows together. “An' you have feelin's for her?”  
“Many.” He fetched up a sigh before closing his eyes and resting his elbow upon the bar. “And that is understatement, I must admit.” He opened his eyes to look at her again.  
“She is a baker and so—we connected via a mutual love of food.”  
“Ohhhh—how romantic,” she swooned. “Gettin' into a boy's heart through his belly—takes a special kinda woman for all that ta happen. An' yer in the South, too, we're no strangers to that.” He chuckled, a nervous chuckle.  
“So she cheated on'er husband with you?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Well—” she chewed on her bottom lip before lifting her other hand to tuck a stringy strand of hair behind her ear. “—keep'n mind—well, keep this'n mind at all times, actually—” She set her hand down on the bar next to the base of the empty glass. “—adultery may be a sin, but it's not a crime.”  
He knitted his eyebrows again. He peered behind him to make sure no one entered the room: they were alone at the bar and the downpour outside made the sole wall of noise around them. He returned to her with a slight tug in the pit of his stomach.  
“Are you suggesting that I—turn the tables?”  
Ellen licked her lips and he caught a whiff of the scotch on her breath; he was amazed she could string words together.  
“Yeah,” she admitted. “If she really loves you—that is, she sees you as more'an a way out—she won't give up on you so easily. Call 'er up an'—for lack of a better word, get inside of her. Yer a very handsome young man and yer kind enough.” He felt his face grow warm at that last sentiment.  
“We both have made mistakes,” he continued, “and I feel terrible for the ones I did—”  
“Everyone messes up, hon,” she assured him, pointing at herself. “And I want to bet that the man she's with right now's probably just a fling.”  
“He did have a bad break up himself after all,” he recalled with a slight shrug of his shoulders.  
“So there ya go. Ring 'er up and tell 'er you want 'er more than anythin' in the world. So much that yer willin' to be the middle man once more.”  
He licked his lips from thirst, or from the butterflies returning to his stomach.  
“You said it's not a crime to cheat on someone,” he pointed out. “After she and I—split—I went with her best friend, who also cheated on a married man—just married, too. Recently, his bride came after the two of us with a hatchet. Mia's husband also wants to kill me.”  
“So there ya go!” she nodded at him. “Adultery isn't a crime but murder sure is. Have at it, Lars. Get into her mind an' convince her that she can have the besta both worlds. She can—as we say—have her cake an' eat it, too.”  
He leaned back but then he remembered he sat on a stool and thus he caught himself before he could fall onto the floor. To be the other man once again, but in an active sense. To be the dark knight, as Sonia called him.  
“Thank you,” he declared.  
“'S my pleasure, hon. You go take care o' yerself, too—I can see you've got a li'l pot on ya, so I know yer eatin' well.”  
He peered down at his waist, which still poked out from his sitting there on the stool.  
“I actually lost weight,” he confessed, “but I am in the mood for something hearty.”  
“You've come'ta the right place. There's a restaurant on the other side o' th' inn here, an' you might haveta wait 'til the storm passes, but you can always ask. But you take better care o' yerself than me.”  
He stared at her, alarmed.  
“You said you had cancer?” he squeaked over the roar of the rain overhead.  
She nodded her head, solemn.  
“On my cervix,” she replied; and he closed his eyes and knitted his eyebrows. “Had it fer over a year an' it's not gettin' any better. If anythin', it's gotten worse, 'specially after Harold left. I've got it on one of my ovaries now, too. Like I said—I don't have much time.”  
He opened his eyes again to watch her wipe a tear from her eye.  
“But,” she assured him, the tone of her voice never changing, “I'm glad I was able ta spend it with you—a darlin' young Danish man with his long, beautiful hair, an' his boyish face, an' his hungry little belly. An' so now I can go onto my grave in peace. So, I wanna say thank you to you, Lars.”  
She left the glass there as she climbed to her feet, and gripped onto the edge of the bar to steady her balance. He watched her regain her composure and then limped out of the alcove and into the other room. He watched her disappear into the corridor on the other end of the room before he climbed to his feet and returned to his room.  
Another clap of thunder startled him and he knew he had to hurry lest the power go out. He skidded back into his room and took his seat once more on the edge of the bed. He lifted the receiver and dialed her number. It rang three times before he was met with the answering machine.  
“Mia, hi—it's me again,” he stated in a low voice. “Er—let me say that I meant it earlier. I miss you. I miss you every day—”  
There was a click on the other end, followed by the clearing of Mia's throat.  
“Lars,” she said in a low voice; and he sniffled at the sound of her saying his name.  
“My darling—”  
“Lars—listen to me. I am with Trent now.”  
“I know, it is just—”  
Ellen's words haunted him. She was like a ghost, a spirit guide there at the bar with her gaunt face and her eyes seeing into the nothing on her doorstep. He knew he had to take her word for it, the words of a dying woman who knew more about girls than him.  
“Mia, I want you,” he confessed. “I need you. And I will do anything—absolutely anything—to have you back with me.”  
There was a pause. And then—  
“Anything?” she asked in a near whisper.  
“Anything. I will wedge myself in between you and Trent if I must.”  
He peered up at the ceiling and he felt the power would cut loose at any minute. He then cleared his throat.  
“I am going to go into the cafe here at this—this—this little inn that I am staying in, and I am going to eat everything. I am going to eat all the pasta, and all of the sauce, and all of the bread. And then I want you to picture me, my stomach bloated full and my clothes hardly containing me, begging you to stop the inflow. But I cannot resist. I am a man of pleasure as you described. As you described me. That's right—feeling so stuffed full with everything that I might develop my own gravitational pull if I take another bite of linguine—is more pleasurable than anything you and Trent are doing right now, or anything Sonia and I have ever done together. And then I want you to put your hands on me and give me the rub to end all rubs. I will yank the palms of your hands onto my skin if I must. And then I will pull you onto me. My belly hard and bulging out more than the hyper extended dick that is my country off of Germany's asshole, or my own hyper extended dick—I will pull you onto me and I will suck the sugar right off of your pretty little cunt. Now if you are going to hang up on me or refuse, understand I have a belly full of food and I will pin you to the floor with my dead weight. Thirty extra pounds of primeval Copenhagen coming down on San Juan's ravaged coastline. Not even my own massive stomach can keep my raptured desire for your flesh and your sex at bay. I know you, Mia. You faked a stare at death in the face so you could be by my side well I twice stared at death in the face for real and I can tell you that it will work between us. Do you understand me?”  
There was silence on her end, and Lars reached over to the lamp on the nightstand to assure the lightning had not sent a surge throughout the power: golden yellow light washed over him. She cleared her throat at that moment.  
“See you soon, sexy,” she whispered in a husky voice before hanging up. He held the receiver from the side of his face with a smirk upon his face. Another clap of thunder rang out over his head and the lamp flickered and went out, leaving him in dim light.  
“Timing is everything,” he said aloud, hanging up the silent phone. “And it doesn't take a drummer to say that.”


	113. Chapter 113

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The storm has weakened minds of steel,  
> the rain to capture hopeless ones.  
> This fear has passed them incomplete,  
> those words unspoken bring no restraint.”  
> -”Storm”, Soundgarden | and I don't know about all of youses, but Southern Gothic is a good genre for Lars and Metallica

Lars stuffed the room key into his jeans pocket as he walked at a brisk pace through the corridor to the front lobby and then into the cafe Ellen had talked about with him. He had changed into a dry button up shirt and brushed his hair with his fingers before leaving the room for a bite to eat, or a few bites to eat. As he turned the corner, he ran his hand down the soft curvature of his belly, accentuated by the fabric of his shirt. He was officially back in business, but now he had a mission to bring Mia back to him.  
The cafe hung dark from the power outage but he spotted the heavy wooden counter separating the kitchen from the dining area, which consisted of several empty tables and low black chairs, many of which looked as though they could collapse at any given moment if the storm surge made its way into the inn. He spotted a row of faded Latin crosses upon the wall over the window before him: he examined closer at the sight of the paint chipping off of the tiers. The smell of rice and spices caught his attention, and he turned to see a black woman and a man with pale skin and a blue and white cap upon his head, both of them huddled behind the counter in gray rain coats in preparation.  
“Are you for dinner, hon?” the woman asked Lars.  
“Yes I am!”  
At the other end of the counter, he spotted Ben hunched over a dish of something. He lifted his head and nodded at Lars as part of a greeting.  
“We made a big pot of jambo 'cause we thought more people were comin' tonight,” said the man, gesturing to the shelf behind him.  
“Pot of—come again?”  
Lars approached the counter for a better look of the large gray metal pot of jambalaya, the stew of rice, spices, and pieces of chicken, crawfish, red bell pepper, and andouille sausage.  
“Oh, jambalaya!”  
“Grab a dish, Lars!” Ben declared with his mouth full.  
“Yeah, you boys eat this up!” the woman encouraged them as she grabbed a dish for Lars himself. “The storm's upon us all an' this food's gonna go bad otherwise.” She lifted a spoon for a few scoops and then she reached for a fork, and handed it to him with a smile.  
“Thank you!” He took a seat at the counter, three seats away from Ben, and got down to it with the dish before him. He took a large bite of rice, chicken, and sausage, the latter of which felt like a kick in the teeth with the spices embedded in the ground pork. But the spices in the rice combined with the moist white chicken was utterly beautiful. He swallowed and took another bite, this time with a bite of crawfish: fresh and silky, not a grain of sand or a lick of a rubbery feeling to be found. The whole stew was cooked to perfection: a big bowl of southern Louisiana right before him. It wasn't what he had in mind during his conversation with Ellen, but he knew it could fill him up, and back to that beautiful feeling he knew all too well.  
He paused to rub the tip of his nose and then continued to dig into the jambalaya. The spices in the rice and the andouille made his face flush: he tossed his hair back from his face and neck, and even unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt to release the heat.  
Soon he finished it out and gestured to the plate for more: the man served him this time, taking the plate and holding it next to the pot.  
“How much is in there?” he asked them, pushing his hair back from the sides of his neck once again.  
“The two of us had a couple of dishes each,” the woman gestured between the two of them, “—Adrienne, the receptionist had two dishes—he's on his third—” She gestured to Ben.  
“There's plenty here for this next helping plus a couple more,” said the man, setting down the plate on the counter in front of Lars. He let out a long low whistle before picking up the fork again: the rain on the roof over their heads continued to fall in a monotonous drone, a sound indicative that the waters outside could overflow into the inn at any minute.  
He tugged down on the tail of his shirt by the time he reached the halfway point: the middle of his body was beginning to swell. But he kept eating. He finished the dish, reaching the bottom and then gesturing for a third helping.  
“You can't be gettin' full, babe,” said the woman with a tone of concern in his voice.  
“This is so filling!” Lars exclaimed, sticking a large bite of rice, bell pepper, and andouille in particular into his mouth. The rain pounded so hard on the roof that the boards making up the ceiling creaked. He swore it would cave in at any given moment: he pressed on, slipping the bites of jambalaya into his mouth and letting his belly swell from the three rather large helpings. The woman brought the pot over to him to scoop out the remaining two spoonfuls of jambalaya into his bowl.  
Something told him he was eating more than the time he ate the red velvet cake in the back of Smell the Magic, but that was a whole cake made for him. This was three and a half bowlfuls of a Cajun stew. With four good sized bites left resting there on the bottom of the bowl, he leaned back and pressed a hand to his belly in a moment's hesitation. Ben, meanwhile, picked up his bowl and licked the bottom of it.  
Lars thought of Angela swinging that hatchet at him and Sonia, and yet he had no idea about that happening. Or perhaps he did: he never brought it up to him. He then thought of Mia and Trent back home, and her last four words before the power outage rang through his mind. She wanted him back. She wanted him back in action on top of that.  
He leaned forward with the fork to the bowl. Each bite had a slice of something upon the rice: the first had a bit of crawfish, still warm and silky. The second carried a rather large slice of bell pepper with a bit of salt and pepper atop it. The third with the moist chicken, moist like the inside of the inn.  
Moist like the inside of the inn! The flood waters reached the building!  
Meanwhile, the fourth bite had the andouille, the last bite of andouille to make his face flush and bring out yet another toss from his hair. He set the fork on the top of the counter and leaned back with his full belly feeling heavy and without another piece of room inside of it, but it was a feeling he needed and missed. He swore if he ate anymore, he would start fattening himself up again. He had had enough for the time being as he clasped a hand to his forehead so as to lift his bangs off of his skin.  
“Hey, listen,” Ben pointed out. Lars glanced over at his pointing up to the ceiling. While he stuffed his face silly, he had paid no attention to the rain outside: silence loomed on the outside of the inn.  
“The eye of the storm,” the man noted. Ben stood to his feet to the back door tucked behind the other side of the counter; Lars almost rolled off of the stool but kept a hand pressed to his belly as he staggered over to the door to take a look outside for himself.  
Even in the darkness outside, the two of them could see the water flooding out the entirety of the pavement making up the alley outside of the inn: the storm clouds overhead menaced at them with their heavy, water logged orange color. Silence all around them.  
Lars burped in his throat, and the taste of spices and andouille returned to his mouth. His ears popped from the low pressure of the eye of the hurricane.  
“Oh—ooh—” He pressed his fingers up against his lips.  
“God, this is almost unreal,” Ben remarked, the sound of his voice slicing through the silence like a knife.  
“I think I ate too much—and too quickly—oof—”  
“Look at that. Look how close that water is. I'm glad it didn't come any closer than this.”  
Lars dropped his hand and let out a low belch, right from the very inside of his solar plexus, and yet it was loud enough to echo out over the flood waters. He gave his belly a loving pat before folding his hands over the warmth radiating from his stomach and leaning back against the dry spot of the door frame. The man and the woman behind them burst out laughing at the sound of it.  
“That sounded like it felt good,” remarked Ben with a chuckle.  
“It did. And—”  
“Lars!” He recognized that man's voice, somewhere out there in the darkness.  
“Hey, there's Jason! Jason!”  
A glimmer of blue white light emerged in the waters before them and Jason splashed through the waters in clompy boots. Another series of splashes emerged from behind him and Lars knew James and Kirk were with him. His illuminated face arose from the swampy darkness; Ben stepped back so as to let the three of them into the inn, and the floor squeaked underneath his feet. Jason held a hurricane lantern in one hand for them: he set his fingers on the base so as to adjust the bright blue white light. James shut the door behind them and thus the seven of them had this room to themselves.  
“I am so full, holy shit,” said Lars as part of his greeting; his face flushed again from the andouille and the feeling inside of him, and he figured it was in response to the stillness outside. “I feel like my gut's gonna pop at any second.”  
“What were you eating?” asked Kirk.  
“Jambalaya. There was a shitload of it back there—it was delicious, but the four of us here had to eat it all because of the hurricane. And I had three large helpings, too.”  
Jason held the lantern up to the dark wall behind them to behold the narrow streams of rain water streaking down the boards from the corners.  
“Really hope this place doesn't flood,” James stated at the sight of the water.  
“That's our worry, too,” the man pointed out. “This place has been standing here since before the Great Depression. It's been renovated several times from all of the storms down here. Granted, this storm's a two and perhaps a three, but it's more than possible. The eyewall is the worst part, too, and it's gonna come at any given minute.”  
“Is it just us here or are there other people?” James asked him.  
“Well, there's Ellen in the next corridor over but she's very ill—I could get her in here but she's been resistant to any help whatsoever—” Lars was rather idle in massaging his belly at the sound of Ellen's name.  
“Adrienne, the receptionist, already went home, too. Although she's probably at a shelter because she lives near the lake. Let's hide out in his room,” he suggested; Lars turned his head to see the man pointing at him.  
“Why my room?” he asked him.  
“It's right smack in the middle of the building, and it's raised up a bit, so if any of the halls are flooded by daybreak, that part of the place won't be as bad.”  
The rickety wooden ceiling overhead rattled a bit right then, which meant the eye was moving away from the French Quarter. Jason bolted out of the room and the six of them followed him into the dark corridor: Lars clutched his belly as he brought up the rear. He was too full; he rounded the corner to see them all congregated around his door. He reached into his pocket for the key and, using the light from Jason's lantern, he unlocked the door and they all filed inside. Lars picked up his bag and shoved it under the bed frame to protect his things and Mia's letters. He took a seat in between the side of the bed and the nightstand while James huddled on the other side of the stand.  
“James,” Lars whispered to him, his belly aching and his face growing warm from moving with such haste. In the faint light of the hurricane light, James turned to him. The ceiling rattled even more, and the rain began to smack against the roof once again. “If we die here, I want you to know that I love you like a brother, man.”  
“Same to you, man,” he answered in a low voice as Ben took his seat next to Lars and they heard the door lock behind them.


	114. Chapter 114

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Here comes the story of the Hurricane,  
> the man the authorities came to blame  
> for somethin' that he never done.  
> Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been,  
> the champion of the world.”  
> -”Hurricane”, Bob Dylan

Lars struggled to make himself comfortable there on the floor given the massive full feeling inside of his belly. He wanted to lie down on the floor but there was nothing around him to support that, and if he stretched his legs he risked the rain water dripping down from the corners overhead onto his feet. He leaned against the side of the bed with his arms over his belly, which felt as though it would overflow in the same vein as the flood in the streets or even the levees holding back the gulf waters. This feeling, this feeling inside of him, an otherwise beautiful feeling that stirred up all of those memories inside of his flesh, felt more like a dead weight than anything warm and pleasurable.  
Jason's hurricane lantern lit up the otherwise pitch dark room: in the dim light, they could see the rain waters streaming down the walls towards the floor boards.  
“Are you sure this room won't flood?” asked James.  
“Positive,” answered the man in the hat. “Like I said, this building has survived several hurricanes since it came to fruition almost sixty years ago. This room here is a monolith—it's survived the most given its height above the ground.”  
Lars shifted his weight upon the floor boards to make the monolith residing in his stomach more comfortable. He placed his hands on the floor on either side of him and slid his feet out a bit. No room to stretch out, and all he wanted was to lay down on the bed behind him and rub his own belly to better feel it all. He tried to arch his back to make his belly hang a bit and he wound up pressing his shoulders against the metal bar holding up the mattress. A part of him wished he was back at the Portland airport because at least there he could lie flat on his back and take a nap.  
“Is he okay?” the woman wondered aloud. In the dim light, he peered over at her watching him, and they all turned to him.  
“You alright?” Ben asked in a low voice.  
“I ate too much,” Lars confessed, “and too quickly might I add. It feels like there's a ten pound dead weight right inside of my stomach and it's just—oh—oof.”  
The winds howled outside of the inn and the rain resembled a machine gun in its falling on the roof. The heart of the eye was starting to pass over them. A sloshing sound outside of the room caught their attention.  
“The hall's flooding,” the man pointed out. Lars closed his eyes so as to picture Mia. He thought of her touch and her kisses: how he wanted one of her kisses right on his belly, right about his waist. That gentle touch, the delicate feeling all around them. He longed for her softness, and for all of the love she pumped into her food for him. He even missed all of her little nibbles on his skin because she always did it out of love for him. She loved him and now she longed for him once again.  
The issue now was the rush of water flooding into the hallways of the inn. He sighed through his nose as the waters sloshed outside of the door.  
“Think the show's going to be cancelled tomorrow night,” said James as the rain fell even harder on the roof.  
“More than likely,” answered the man. “Even though we're in the midst of an El Nino, the forecast calls for another depression within the next day or so, which means more rain and flooding. I'd find a way back to Houston or at least up to Baton Rouge and then fly back home.”  
“How are the waters doing?” asked the woman.  
Lars watched Jason pick up the lantern so as to cast the light over the door and the other side of the room.  
“Nothing,” he assured them. “I don't see any trace of water coming in.”  
“I wonder how Mark's doing,” Ben muttered under his breath.  
Lars shut his eyes and bowed his head in order to better focus on the feeling inside of him. He wanted to feel good, but all of the jambalaya he had eaten pushed against the inside of his stomach, hard and full. How he wanted someone to reach over and open his shirt to give him a nice tender belly rub. He didn't care who took the time out to do it: he wanted the touch and he wanted the relief. Forget about the hurricane, just take the attention off of it and direct it unto his stomach and the silkiness of his skin.  
He wanted to reach down between his legs and relieve himself that way, but he felt now was not the time.  
They must have been in that room for over an hour when the rains finally waned down: between that time, Jason lifted the light to take a look over at the door and if the flood waters were making their way into the room. Lars watched him shift his weight a bit as a gentle trickle of water entered through the crack between the door and the floor at one point, but he had faith in the man in the hat. Meanwhile, the feeling inside of his stomach remained there, radiating warmth from the heart of that heaviness.  
The whistle from the winds died down over their heads and the rain dissipated into a steady rhythm before dropping off and dying out into silence.  
Jason lifted the lantern one more time to make sure the room had not flooded.  
“How is it?” asked Kirk, his voice breaking from staying quiet for so long.  
“It's hard to tell,” Jason confessed, climbing onto his knees.  
“Come on, let's assess the damage,” the man suggested, and he climbed to his feet; the woman followed him to the door. Lars need not turn his head lest the feeling inside of his stomach worsen upon the largest of movements. James stood to his feet and tossed his long blond hair back with a flick of his head; Kirk and Ben stood up with ease from the hard floor. Lars remained there with his back against the side of the bed and his knees bent enough to keep his thighs off of his belly.  
Everyone filed out of his room, leaving him alone with nothing more than his thoughts and his heavy feelings. Once he was met with silence and darkness except for the glow of dim light from the rain clouds fizzling and disappearing outside of the window, he spread his legs out over the floor in front of him. He let out a low whistle through his parted lips.  
The pressure was off.  
A rumble of distant thunder emerged outside, but as far as he knew, the hurricane had disappeared. Someone out in the inn let out a loud hacking cough, and he wondered if that was Ellen.  
He reached behind him for his things under the bed: in the dim light, he could see Mia's letters piled on top of one of his pairs of jeans underneath the opening flap. He took out her letters from their safe place only to hold them against his chest for a moment.  
He lay them on his lap, and his forearms brushed against his swollen belly: he swore he gained ten pounds just from sitting there on the floor and waiting for the storm to pass through there. He picked up the one top and held it before his face.  
“I need your sex,” he whispered to the envelope; he pressed his lips to the surface and all the while took in the gentle, earthy aroma of the paper. He lay the letter on his lap to do the same to the other six letters. He then placed the pads of his fingers on the button of his jeans and his belly spilled out. He let out another sigh, this time of relief, before he pushed down the band of his underwear.  
He closed his eyes as he let his fingers do the talking below his waist. He poked and stroked on the top of his length and moved down to the head, but he could not bring that tautness back: the feeling resided, for the most part, inside of his belly. He needed the rub of a hand, and a soft one at that.  
He tugged his hands back and massaged his palms with the pads of his fingers. His skin had lost a bit of roughness, but he was reluctant to do it for himself. But on the other hand, the other alternative was having James do it for him, and he wondered if he had that soft of a hand.  
Lars paused for a moment, and then, using the dim, ambient light from outside, he held onto the bottom most button and unfastened it. He undid the second one up, followed by the third, the fourth, and the fifth. And at that moment, he had exposed his whole belly to himself, a pale soft looking slab of flesh carrying a soft glow to it from the light outside of the room. Having his shirt and his jeans unfastened was relief in and of itself, but he needed that touch. He felt starved of that touch.  
Nibbling on his bottom lip, he rested his hands on the soft, smooth skin, that gentle curve of his waist and the firm feeling in the rest of his belly. He relaxed his whole body and once again let his hands do the talking, moving ever so gently on his flesh around his waist. The very feeling itself sent chills over his skin, or perhaps the feeling came from the rain in the air sinking in over the French Quarter; but the touch of his hands over that heavy sensation within him was enough to bring a gentle tug to the pit of his stomach. This felt like masturbating, but therein lay something else to it, something a little more unknown. It was akin to having a meal with Mia: he stepped into a strange territory and he had her with him. Although he sat in this room all alone, he ventured back into that strange territory once again. That one spot on his body that touched him more than the feelings he had for own his face staring back at him.  
He kept rubbing his belly with both hands and then lifted his hand to run the tip of his finger along the rim of his belly button, just how Mia did it for him. The tip of his tongue slithered out from in between his lips but he kept his whole body relaxed. This hung at a level higher than masturbating, especially since the fluttery, tugging feeling in the pit of his stomach only strengthened. It was erotic and at the same time, it was empowering.  
He kept his touch light upon his skin so as to imitate the feeling of her hand. He tilted his head back so the crown of his hair brushed against the side of the bed. Mia was still back home in Oregon, but he continued to long for that beautiful feeling even more, the fluttery feeling inside of his stomach. He felt his shaft harden at the touch of his own hand. His chest started to heave and his breath squeaked out of his parted lips accompanied with a bitter sweet moan. His pleasure spiked with a bit of pain: the lovely feeling of having a stuffed full stomach and a hand to rub him but the pained feeling of being alone in a single room with no power in the heart of a storm ravaged city.  
“Lars?” Kirk's voice cut through his concentration. His eyes popped open and he stared straight into darkness except for the dim glow flowing in through the window before him.  
“Yes?” His voice crackled and broke.  
“Mark's here—he pretty much swam here, though. But he's gonna take us all back to Houston, so—”  
“Pack it in,” he finished.  
“Yeah, here comes Jason with the light—might want to put your boots on, too—it's pretty deep over by the front door…”  
The sound of feet splashing through the flood waters further broke his concentration, and Lars buttoned down his shirt and refastened his jeans lest he be caught. He stuffed Mia's letters back into his overnight bag and slipped off his tennis shoes to put on his black boots, which rested at the bottom. He had zipped it up by the time Jason emerged from the darkness to his right with the hurricane lantern in hand.  
Lars climbed to his feet and followed the two of them out to the hallway: by the light of the lantern, he observed the inch of dark murky flood waters rested upon the floor of the corridor; he hesitated at the entrance of the front lobby where the waters were deep enough to engulf the entirety of his feet. He sighed through his mouth and dodged to the front door to meet up with Mark at the curb, which had submerged under six inches of black rain water.  
Lars wondered if Ellen had found that mausoleum she told him about as he set his overnight bag into the bed of the truck and then wedged himself into the back seat in between Ben and Jason; Kirk nestled right behind Mark, while James took the front seat.  
“Three hundred miles back to Houston and I have no idea how the roads are,” Mark confessed as he started up the truck and, careful not to hit the curb or anything else on the road, rolled down the wrong side of the street. On one hand, Lars was glad he had scrounged that fleeting moment of pleasure for himself; but on the other hand, and for all he knew, he could be in this truck until sunrise from all of the flood waters. He longed to be next to Mia again, and he hoped the next round of dates were postponed long enough by the hurricanes, and long enough for him to rekindle it between the two of them.


	115. Chapter 115

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All these changes taking place,  
> I wish I'd seen the place,  
> But no one's ever taken me.  
> Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away...”  
> -”Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town”, Pearl Jam

Sure enough, they reached Houston by the time the first rays of soft pink and orange sunlight poked through the dark clouds on the horizon: the waters from the swamps had overflowed onto the highway from New Orleans; Lars could not recall the last time he had seen such still waters to resemble gaping black hole as when they drove around Lake Pontchartrain looming in the pitch darkness. They were the sole car on the highway as everyone either sought out higher ground or had been caught up in the storm surges. The light from the headlights reflected on the overrun murky swamp waters before them: six men riding through the darkness all alone. Mark pointed out the sights of feu follets, or swamp gas emerging from in between the trees and giving off an eerie glow through the darkness. Indeed, Lars spotted a low cloud rising upon the floor of the swamp, but the flood waters began to recede by the time he could make out the shape and the color of the cloud.  
Lucky for him, however, the jambalaya tithed him over until they reached the airport at five thirty in the morning. He clasped his arms over his belly to keep in the warmth: a mere handful of hours following a hurricane and he shivered from the damp feeling in the air around them. He thought about Ellen and if she found peace in the bayou as of yet; he thought about the receptionist, Adrienne, and if she was alright in the wake of the hurricane. And then, as they rolled up to the large sliding front doors of the airport, he wondered about Mia and if Trent had any idea what was going on between the two of them.  
The next flight back to San Francisco would not leave until noon and even then it was questionable from the next depression on the horizon. But the next flight to Portland left in an hour and thus Lars spent most of the loose change he had in his wallet for a ticket, and James followed suit for the same flight. Ben took the next flight back to Seattle while Mark offered Kirk and Jason a ride to Dallas/Fort Worth in hopes to find a flight back to the Bay Area.  
Lars took his seat in the front row of business class while James sank down behind him: the two of them and a small handful of other people were the sole passengers on the plane. On one hand, he thought this part of the United States was a bit more lively, teeming with people ready to have a good time. But then again, he recalled all the times a blizzard from the North Sea grounded everyone and everything in Copenhagen.  
Before taking his seat, Lars opened his overnight bag to read her letters again when something at the bottom caught his eye, something made of black leather.  
“Elske!” he said in a hushed voice; he took the journal out of its hiding place and spotted a pencil laying on the edge of the lining. He then zipped up the bag, and slipped it into the overhead compartment.  
He put his feet up on the resting bar on the wall before him and opened the journal to a fresh page, but he did not feel like writing. He still had the image of Ellen etched inside of his mind, sitting there before him at the bar in all of her last moments. He fastened his seat belt for the take off and then closed his eyes to picture her there, still with her empty glass of scotch.  
He kept her gaunt face in mind as he put down the first scrawls of graphite onto the page. He recalled James' mother passing from cancer by her refusing treatment, and yet it was clear to him that Ellen had decided to give up the fight after doing so for so long. Her body looked so frail, wasting away to nothing in comparison to the full, healthy shape of his body.  
This was not the God that failed: this was someone reconciling with sorrow and letting her time come to her, and he kept this in mind as he recalled the lines of her hair receding back from her face.  
He held the pencil with all tips of his fingers to start shading. At one point, he picked up the napkin on the side table to smear the graphite to resemble the ghost lights in the swamp. He gazed on at her eyes, deepset large dark holes staring back at him and into that great unknown. Even though he knew her for a few minutes, he felt so close to her, as if he had known her for years. Underneath the drawing, he wrote “dearest Ellen,” and hesitated for a second before laying a slash next to her name and writing “Elske” after it. Underneath that, he wrote “the next victim of the harvester of sorrow” followed by his name in swirled cursive.  
“Who's she?” asked James from behind him; he turned his head to see him peeking over the seats at the drawing.  
“She was a woman at the hotel last night,” Lars explained, feeling his throat close up with tears, “she told me how to make things better with Mia. She was dying, literally.”  
“Literally?”  
“Yeah. She had cancer, and her husband left her. She was on death's doorstep—she looked like a ghost.”  
“Jeez, that's rough. I like that phrase you wrote, though.”  
“Which? 'Harvester of Sorrow'?”  
“Yeah.” James flashed him a knowing smirk and then he jerked back into his seat.  
“Wait. What are you doing?”  
“You know that song I came up with? 'The God That Failed'?”  
“Yeah?” Lars couldn't see what he was doing.  
“You just gave me a better idea, man.”  
He sighed as he returned to his normal sitting position and kept gazing on at the drawing resting in his lap. He wanted to cry but he knew her time had come if it haven't already. He would have to tell Mia about her and cry about her then so he wasn't alone.  
The flight took three hours, three hours to move away from the next round of thunderstorms, and Lars was eager to step off of the plane and take the first taxi to the southern side of Portland. James, meanwhile, took a taxi to Ashley's house on Multnomah Boulevard.  
He stared out the window at the passing houses until the one he came for, the blue and white house with the oak tree in the front yard, entered his view. He spent the rest of his money to pay the fare and thanked the driver as he climbed out into the cool, hazy sunlight. The butterflies danced in his stomach as he strode up the walkway to the front door. He raised his hand and knocked on the door three times.  
Silence.  
Then the door unlocked and swung open to reveal Mia, still dressed in her black baking clothes and smelling of fresh baked bread and donuts.  
“Hej, min sexet pige,” he greeted her with a little smirk.  
“Hola, papacito,” she replied, her eyes gleaming. He threw his arms around her and planted his lips onto her mouth.  
Such bliss! Such a feeling he had missed.  
Never lifting his mouth, he pushed her into the house and closed the door with his foot. Her hands slid underneath the sides of his shirt to grope him.  
“You're still a little plump, I see,” she whispered in between kisses.  
“I try my best, darling,” he told her, slinging his overnight bag off of his shoulder and onto the floor next to his booted feet. “I ate so much jambalaya last night.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. You know, 'cause of the hurricane. I did very little, too, so I let it sit with me for as long as possible.”  
“Oh, yeah, that's right! I was worried about you.”  
“I was worried, too,” he confessed, sliding his hands up her back to fondle the latch on her bra, “but the power went out and we had a little flooding, though. Nothing too horrendous.”  
He then jerked his hands back and clapped them together twice.  
“Oh! Before I forget—”  
He knelt down next to his bag of things to fetch his journal. Careful not to let her see the words and writings on the previous pages, he opened the book to the drawing he had made while on the plane. Mia raised her eyebrows at it.  
“Oh—Oh, my, that's beautiful. Haunting in fact.”  
“This is a woman I met in the bar of the hotel I stayed in,” he explained, “her name was Ellen. She told me to renew things between us.”  
She tilted her head to the side to read his hand writing. “'The next victim of the harvester of sorrow'—what was happening with her?”  
“A very sick woman. She told me she was glad to have spent her final moments with me.” He then turned to her. “Does Trent know about you and me?”  
“Oh, no, no,” she assured. “As far as he—and Mike—as far as the two of them both know, I am just taking a break from him.”  
He fluttered his eyelashes at her.  
“I am telling the truth, I swear,” she promised him, and he swallowed down the nervous feeling inside of him.  
“She told me to turn the tables—to actively become the other man for you to win you back.”  
“And you are succeeding,” she whispered, putting her arms around his waist, “you know after you called me last night and you told me all of those things, I knew I needed you back with me.”  
He snapped the journal closed with one hand as he leaned in for another kiss on the lips. He felt her hand stroking his chest: her fingers crept over his shirt so as to unfasten the top two buttons. She caressed his chest and his collar bone, and slid her hand upon his shoulder to expose his skin. He lifted his mouth again.  
“I mean—for fuck's sake—you faked your death so you could be in my arms right now,” he recalled, and a wide grin crossed her face.  
“I did. What say—you and I go into the bedroom and have a little make up?” she suggested.  
“Do you have anything to eat, though?” he asked her, feeling his shirt slide down the curvature of his shoulder.  
“Oh—Oh, I thought you would never ask!” she declared, patting his chest and then his belly. “I have some fresh donuts in the fridge, actually.”  
“Spicy, chocolate, and sexy?”  
“Spicy, chocolate, and sexy, yes! With the shot of tequila, too.”  
She held him by the hand to guide him into the kitchen. He set his journal on the table and tossed his hair back from his exposed collar. She opened the refrigerator door and stooped inside for what he came into the room for. She revealed to him a white china plate with a low pyramid of those donuts, those chocolate donuts with the red glaze. That sweetness combined with that spice and that earthiness.  
“Oh, fuck, those smell so good!” he declared. She set the platter down on the table in front of him: he counted seven of them and he felt his heart pound inside of his chest at the sight of them. She lifted up the one on top and held it before his face.  
“I'm so glad you're back, baby,” she whispered to him, licking her lips before giving them a little pucker.  
“I have wanted to be back here for—too long, it seems,” he replied, lingering closer to the edge of the donut. “And I—am glad that you are still with it, darling.”  
He flashed her a wink as he took a bite.


	116. Chapter 116

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I hear a voice from the back of the room,  
> I hear a voice cry out you want something good.  
> Well, come on a little closer let me see your face.  
> Yeah, come on a little closer by the front of the stage.”  
> -”Buena”, Morphine

Mia had hand fed Lars five of those donuts, and then she took the remaining two for herself. It was that moment the twenty-seven hours worth of staying awake started to sink into his body and his mind, and the full flavor of the donuts only helped him better relax there at the kitchen table. She licked her lips and pushed back his bangs to plant a kiss on his forehead, and then another one on his lips. She set her fingers on the next button down on his shirt.  
“Let me unbutton,” he told her, feeling his eyelids growing heavy. “Please.”  
She raised an eyebrow at him.  
“I mean—behage. Forgive me, I—I have not slept since early yesterday morning.”  
She kissed him on the lips once again. She never said anything, but he knew what she intended here.  
“Are you still hungry?” she asked him.  
“Yes,” he replied, almost without thinking.  
She stood upright and returned to the refrigerator for something else. He sighed as she took out something: his eyelids closed and he bowed his head forward. He could not recall what happened next but he did awake to laying flat on his back on her bed. Daylight spread over the ceiling above him and he remained awake for a few minutes before falling right back to sleep.  
Lars awoke to the sight of the sky painted light pink to signify evening outside of the window, and the feeling of laying alone there in the bedroom. He lifted his hands from his chest to massage his neck and shoulders. She had taken off his shirt for him and then took him back to the bed.  
Mia stepped into the room right then with her red apron tied around her waist and a beaming expression upon her face.  
“How long have I been asleep?” he asked her, clearing his throat.  
“Let's see—” she started, “you fell asleep within twenty minutes of coming here, and then before I went to work, I got you out of your clothes and guided you back here because I figured you hadn't slept in a bed since you left your house. I came back and you didn't stir—I mean, you were out cold. I was just about to wake you up for dinner.” She showed him a smile. He lifted his head to take a better look at her as she lay her hands on the edge of the bed next to his side.  
“You mean—” he grunted, “I basically slept all day?”  
“Pretty much, yeah.”  
“And you're not upset I fell asleep on you? I came back to see you and rekindle things in between us.”  
“And you did well, baby,” she assured him. “After I came home, I curled up next to you and took a short nap myself. I've been working harder than ever since you and I split. As far as you and I both know, we both needed to rest ourselves.”  
She lifted a hand for a light rub upon his bare belly.  
“It was nice to have a boy next to me again,” she continued, “Trent and I cuddled once but it was nothing like cuddling with you, though.”  
He lifted himself onto his elbows: his head spun from laying flat on his back for so long. But he managed to pull himself into a full upright position with his hands resting idle right in between his knees.  
“When we were broken up,” he told her, “and I was back at my house—I didn't feel like eating.”  
“You, too?” She took a seat on the edge of the bed.  
“Yeah. What got me going was finding that last remaining glimmer of strength inside of me—and also the simple fact that I had not eaten in nearly two days at that point.”  
“Were you—?” she started, taken aback.  
“Yes,” he answered, solemn. “Yes, I was. I found myself wasting away, for lack of a better word. I cannot believe I actually managed to go into the kitchen that morning and actually put everything I could find right into my mouth. And I mean that, too. I ate so much in one sitting.”  
“And you feel terrible about that?” she asked him.  
“Not really, no,” he confessed with a shrug. “Just—and yesterday I ate all of that jambalaya during the hurricane.”  
“Real authentic jambalaya at that, too,” she pointed out.  
“Very much so, might I add.” He straightened himself up so as to show her the bare skin on his chest and his belly. “Full of the crawdads and the spicy sausage—I had three large bowls of New Orleans right in front of me. So, I don't feel any guilt about it. I am merely admonishing that onto you, darling, and—”  
He stopped and sniffled the air.  
“Is something burning?”  
She gasped.  
“Oh, shit! The bread!”  
She scrambled to her feet and darted out of the room. Lars kept sniffling as he swung his legs around the edge of the bed and padded out into the hallway. The acrid smell of burning bread worsened and grew stronger as he came closer to the kitchen doorway. He stepped into the room right as she pulled the metal tin of scorched bread out of the oven accompanied with a billowing curtain of gray smoke. She set the tin down on the table and then turned back around to switch off the heat; she then fanned the smoke before her face with the oven mitt on her hand.  
“God dammit,” she muttered out of frustration. He pressed his hands to his hips while he stared at the tin pan there on the table: the top of the loaf smoldered as light plumes of smoke rose up and dissipated into nothing. She took off the gloves and switched off the two burners on the stove.  
“It's ready—I don't know what to do with that bread now, though. That was going to be a major staple in it, and now I let it get away from me.”  
“Bread—crumb stuffing?” he suggested with a shrug; that was all he could think of as a use for burnt bread. She turned to him with her eyebrows raised: he glanced down at himself and noticed he was not wearing any clothes except for his underwear. She ambled over to him and put her arms around his waist before giving him a kiss on the lips and then the side of the neck.  
“Oh, I have missed you so much,” she whispered into his face.  
“Shall I—eat with no shirt on or should I fetch some of my clothes out of my satchel?”  
“Go shirtless. Make yourself comfortable again.”  
“Gladly, darling.” He showed her a smirk before he leaned in and gave her a kiss on the lips. She let go of him and he padded to the table to have a seat once more. She picked up the pan of bread and brought it over to the counter for slicing.  
“And if you are wondering where your journal is,” she told him, “I put it on the couch.”  
“I see.” He leaned back in the chair and set his elbow on the top of the back. He felt a creeping, crawling sensation on his ankles even though when he looked down, he saw nothing but his own skin. An uneasy gnawing sensation emerged in the pit of his stomach. All was still not right in Mia's house.  
“I still get a weird feeling from this house, even with him out of it,” he confessed. “Remember when I ate over here for dinner that one time and I got a bad feeling?”  
“Oh, yeah, that's right,” she recalled as she sliced the bread into cubes. “You still have it?”  
“Yeah. It's like a creepy crawly feeling, like I have something slithering over me.”  
“Huh. I am not sure how to look at that.” She placed a skillet on one of the back burners of the stove and turned up the heat before she stepped over to the pantry for olive oil.  
“All I know is in retrospect, it was because something kept telling me that you were living in kind of a shitty household. I am not sure what it could be this time around, though.”  
“Creepy crawly, you said?” She knitted her eyebrows at that.  
“Yeah. Like it starts down from my ankles and goes all the way up my legs to my hips and then over my whole body. It has this odd chill to it, like the feeling you get leaping into a swimming pool or a stretch of cool water. Or better yet, it feels akin to slime.”  
“Slime?”  
“Slime. Like in Ghostbusters, except this is more of a sinister feeling. Like way more sinister.”  
She backed away from the skillet on the stove so as to gesture to it.  
“You see this skillet here?”  
“Yeah.”  
“I didn't tell you this because I wasn't sure if you could stomach the very thought of it, but the night I broke it off with him, he actually hit me with it.”  
Lars' eyes popped open and he tilted his head to the side at that sound of that.  
“He—He hit you?” he stammered out, feeling his heart pound inside of his chest.  
“He hit me,” she stated, picking up the cubes of bread and pouring them into the oil. “Twice, the first time in the head, the second time in the back as I was running out of here to go to Ashley's house.”  
“He—focking—hit you.”  
“Twice,” she repeated, holding up two fingers. “And then he had the fucking nerve to follow me all the way up to Ashley's house and then he threatened to kill us, you and me in particular.”  
“What I want to know is how did he know my name,” he wondered aloud, “because my band's not that big. We're still trying to find our footing.”  
“I have no idea,” she admitted with a shrug. “I have no idea how he found out your name. And when he said your name, it took us aback. You know, we weren't expecting him to say your name, but he did. We also wondered how he managed to find out what you smell like, too. Ashley says she doesn't know how that happened.”  
“All I can think of is the donuts,” he pointed out.  
“What, my donuts?”  
“Yeah. With their aromatic sexiness and whatnot.”  
“They do linger from the tequila, but not that much.”  
“Huh. Another thing that's been bugging me lately is when I was with Sonia, and Jerry and I came down here the day before Ben's wedding, and we were headed out to Mount Hood—along that road going along the river and going out to—The Dalles, I want to call it?”  
“The Dalles, yes! Bridge of the Gods, too!”  
“Anyways, we stop at one point outside of town and we found this three story building overlooking the river. We figured it was a warehouse although there were no windows to be found, and we were walking along this dirt road to the side, where all of these trash cans were at.”  
“That's the ice cream warehouse,” she replied, stirring the stuffing in the skillet with a wooden spoon, “Wayne's father owns that place, but I don't think Wayne himself has ever worked a day in there.”  
“So that's who that was…”  
“You met him?” she demanded, appalled.  
“Yeah, he scared the hell out of me, too, because I recognized him from the Mother Love Bone concert. But anyways, I spotted a Smell the Magic donut box, like on top of one of the cans.”  
“You did?”  
“Yeah. And I want you to know ahead of time that I am not pissed or anything about it—I just want a little context.”  
“Well…” She let the stuffing sit for a moment and turned around to face him with a hand to her hip, “the day before then he—Will, is his name—came into the bakery asking for me. It was my day off, too—I drove up to Seattle to deliver the love letters from Sonia to Ben that afternoon. But Marcia was in there that day and she told him over and over she didn't where I was, and so to smooth things over she offered him a dozen donuts. He left without paying, too.”  
“Wow.”  
“That was the day before Ben's wedding, too? When you and Jerry went over there?”  
“Yeah. After we came back into town, we went over to the lake over here—”  
“Oswego?”  
“Yeah. The two of us and Layne went over to Lake Oswego and we camped out overnight before returning to Seattle because I had my show and everything the next day. That's what is baffling me about Ben telling me about my getting my ass kicked in Pike Place Market again. I was in Jerry's truck underneath a big heavy horse blanket and then we didn't arrive in Seattle until later in the afternoon after the wedding. I had no idea what was going on until Ben told me about it in Houston yesterday.”  
“That's interesting because the last time I was up in Seattle, which was those two days before Ben's wedding, I talked to Krist—Krist from Nirvana, you know? And he told me after Ashley did her interview with Kurt, they got word the three of them, Nirvana, were involved with her, Marcia, and me. But I denied it, and he agreed with me. Must've been hearsay, I suppose…” Her voice trailed off for a second, and then her face lit up.  
“Remember the first night you and I went up to Seattle together and we met them?”  
“—yes? Yes! Yes I do! That was the night I stuffed myself silly in the room and you gave me a beej the first time.”  
“Remember they were with us? Me, in particular?”  
They both hesitated.  
“You think maybe somebody saw us all together in those two days?” he suggested in a low voice.  
“Seattle is a big city after all,” she pointed out. “Anyone could have been watching us and then spread a rumor.”  
“But you don't think—” he sputtered, “oh, well, Kurt and James do have a little bit of a resemblance to one another, but James is about a half a meter taller than him. Krist sticks out like a television tower and—” Lars stopped and Mia gaped at him, and then she clasped her hands to her mouth in shock.  
“That was Chad,” he whimpered.  
“That was Chad?”  
“Chad Channing. He looks like me. That was fucking Chad your—your—crazed ex-husband beat the hell from. That's probably why Nirvana has a new drummer now. He must have heard that rumor”  
“But he has brown eyes, though,” she pointed out.  
“Yeah, and when I saw Will outside of the warehouse, I was wearing sunglasses. He couldn't see my eyes, but he must have gotten us confused by mere description of hair and round face. But I also wonder exactly how many men of middle height with long brown hair and chubby faces roam about Seattle and how on Earth was he able to pick me out. Did Krist specify on where he got word of that?”  
“Some woman who said she knew both Chad and Ben, and Andy Wood, too. I'm drawing a blank on her name, though. It wasn't Xana, Andy's girl, I know that. By the way, how do you know Nirvana has a new drummer now?”  
“Mia, I am a musician. I keep up on fellow musicians so—I have my ways with the Danish charm.”  
She chuckled at that.  
“Danish charm,” she echoed, “anyways, I think we are ready now. A little dinner and then a little make up fun afterwards.”  
“Sounds like a plan, darling.”


	117. Chapter 117

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer.  
> Well, my baby, she gone, gone tonight,  
> I ain't seen the girl since night before last,  
> I wanna get drunk, get off of my mind.”  
> -”One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”, John Lee Hooker

After a nice dinner of mashed plantains, beans, slices of sauteed pork, the bread crumb stuffing in olive oil, and buttered green beans, Mia led Lars back into the bedroom: he kept a hand pressed to his belly all the way back there. He lay back down on the bed, and reclined himself onto his elbows, and opened up his legs so she could look right in between his thighs. He tossed his bangs back with a flick of his head so as to present his neck to her.  
She peeled off her top to show him her red lace bra, the one he loved, and then she stripped off her trousers. He showed her a smirk as she lay her knee down on the mattress next to his hip.  
“Come here, you little pork chop,” she whispered.  
“Pork chop, is that what you called me?” he asked her.  
“Yeah—you are just a cute little pork chop. With a sexy little belly—and beautiful hair—” She placed the tips of her fingers on the edge of his scalp and ran them through his hair.  
“I just want to kiss you—” she told him in a whisper so soft she may as well have breathed it, “—and never stop kissing you.”  
Her lips were silken, and the feel of her hand on the back of his head allowed him to relax once more. That relaxed feeling he had missed and longed for this whole entire time. She brought her body closer to him; he lifted his left arm to hold her the lower part of her back.  
“Oh, yes—” he breathed into her face; “this is what I'm talking about right here.”  
“This was all you wanted,” she replied in between kisses.  
“Everything,” he told her in a husky voice; he moved his head back to look at her in the eye. “Sonia was too rough—I missed the slowness and the sweetness of flesh here.”  
“Trent was quite rough, too,” she recalled. “He insisted on finding a bull whip to go with my boots.”  
“A bull whip? Why doesn't he find you a set of handcuffs while he's at it, too?”  
“Right? But I have learned that all I need—all you and I need, I should say—is just gentle, sweet love.”  
“We can still get a little bit animal at times, though,” he suggested.  
“Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, baby—” She brought her lips to his mouth once again, but this time she rested her free hand on his chest, and ran it down onto his soft belly. Oh, that placid touch, that feel of her smooth skin. That feeling he wanted and needed for so many days and nights.  
She lifted her right leg so as to straddle his waist and the whole middle of his body.  
He glanced down at her waist and the sleeve of red lace over her crotch: he pulled her down even closer to his body and ran his hand over her butt. She lay right on top of him. She kissed the side of his face, and the side of his neck, before she lifted her head so he could give her a deep, passionate kiss for himself.  
They were making love now, sweet darling love.  
He set his other hand on her back: his fingers crept up her spine toward the hooks on her bra. Her hips brushed against the edges of his waist: the feel of her hip bones brought a wave of shivers down to his genitals.  
“Oh, God—” he breathed out as her hips started to gyrate at a slow pace. “Oh—please—please, my darling—behage, min skat—” He gasped, then tilted his head back to show her more of his neck and his Adam's apple. She pressed her lips right in the middle of his throat and a whisper of a moan emerged from his mouth. He shut his eyes as she kept kissing him right on the throat and grinding her hips against his waist. He felt her slid her lips down to his collar bones and to his chest: she pressed her lips to his left nipple. The moan from his throat grew louder at the feel of her lips there. She puckered her lips for a little suckling.  
“Yes—Yes—Yes, darling,” he begged her, “yes—I'm a pork chop—I'm a pig. I'm a focking PIG!”  
A loud hammering knock on the door stopped them both in place.  
“GODDAMMIT!” he shouted, his voice breaking and echoing over the walls of the room. Exasperated, Mia climbed off of him and stumbled to the closet for her bathrobe. He lay there, flat on his back and still remaining with the feeling of her lips still on his nipple, staring up at the ceiling. Once she had left the room, he shut his eyes and thought of what to do next whence she returned to the bedroom. He heard the door opening down the hall.  
“Jen!” Mia declared.  
“Who?” Lars wondered aloud. He heard a voice, one that sounded familiar but he was unsure as to where he heard it, and then—  
“Are you—Are you drunk?” she demanded. His eyes popped open and he lifted his head to look out the doorway of the bedroom.  
“Jen—Jen!”  
Lars pushed himself off of the bed and padded into the hall.  
“Please—forgive me,” the woman's speech slurred, as if she had had a great deal to inject into her body. “Both of you.”  
He poked his head out of the doorway at the sight of Jen Davidson, sitting on the floor of the hall and leaning back against the wall. Her chin rested upon the collar of her shirt, which had a large smear of something orange down the front. As he approached her, he caught the rank smell of vomit on her: she had thrown up all over herself.  
“What happened?” he asked Mia, who stood before Jen with her hand to her mouth. “What is going on here?”  
“Wayne and Will—” she groaned; every so often she let out a loud hiccup, “—got me—hic—so—hic—drunk. They're—trying—trying—hic—to get answers from me.”  
“Answers to what?” Mia demanded, her voice muffled by the palm of her hand.  
“But I—I—I told them—” Jen stammered, her speech slurring. “—I—I—I wasn't going—g-gonna talk—hic—fuck—good thing I only told—told—told them—nothing—hic—”  
“Answers to what?” Mia repeated.  
“Yeah, answers to what?” Lars joined in, grimacing at the smell oozing off of her shirt.  
“About the—interview—hic—interview—”  
“What interview?” asked Mia, knitting her eyebrows together.  
“—and the—the blood—in your—your, your, your—b-bathroom, Mia—hic—”  
“Blood?” Lars gaped at both women.  
“Did you see a smudge on my plunger when you and I were initially—” Mia lowered her voice to a near whisper. “—engaging in our affair?”  
“Yes? Vaguely. That was—blood?”  
She nodded with a grave expression on her face.  
“Yeah, I—according to the hospital, and the gynecologists—I was more than just hit in the head at Pike Place Market.”  
Lars hesitated for a moment, and then he felt his stomach turn once he realized what she meant by that.  
“Oh—Oh my—Oh my God—” He threw his arms around her; she groaned in her throat at the squeeze of his arms, and then she pulled her head back so as to look at him right in the face.  
“It's okay, baby,” she whispered to him, kissing his lips, “I am okay now, and they were unable to find anything that might indicate something troublesome.”  
“Also,” he added, stroking her back, “I do not think you need to whisper—this woman is obviously hammered out of her wits. She's not going to remember anything once the booze has left her system.”  
Mia swallowed as she turned her head back to Jen there on the floor: she still hung onto Lars all the while.  
“What interview, Jen?” she asked in a gentle tone of voice. “What interview are you talking about?”  
“I… am—not—hic—talking!” she barked, her speech slurring even more; she let out a loud hiccup followed by a low belch that reeked of stale alcohol.  
“Are you referring to the interview between Ashley and Kurt?” Lars assisted. “Or something else that we don't know about?”  
“No—Tracy—Tracy—I promised Tracy—not to talk about it—hic—”  
“Tracy! Kurt's girlfriend!” Lars recalled.  
“She—She—told me—not to say—Ash-Ashley and—and—and her mom—refused to talk to—to—to Wayne and Will—”  
They glanced at one another.  
“Wayne used to work for the press, for the local newspaper here,” Mia told him. “He was probably snooping around, trying to figure us out. And Ashley wasn't going to talk because she's my best friend. Liv, too.”  
“Tracy must have been there during the interview!” he followed along. “Which can only mean one thing—”  
“What's that?”  
“Ashley never cheated on James with Kurt. She was probably using that as a cover because of all of this happening. It sounds like she lied about it because of the aforementioned snooping around.”  
“How did you found that out?” Mia demanded, fluttering her eyelashes at him.  
“I shall tell you later,” he vowed. “But for now—”  
Jen let out another loud belch followed by a sickened moan. He let go of Mia and crouched down before Jen, who bowed her head down towards the floor as if she was about to fall asleep right there on the floor.  
“Jen—what is another thing you were sworn to secrecy over?” he asked her in a kind voice. “You said you were given drinks to unload secrets—is there anything else you are hiding?”  
“I—I—I promised not—n-not—to tell any—anyone else this—”  
“It is alright. Mia and I will not tell anyone this. I promise.”  
“Y-You do?”  
“Yes. Trust me. See, when I get drunk, I get happy go lucky. I laugh and I get silly, but I do not dare let my vault go unlocked. Deep in my heart, I would rather die than break a promise.”  
Jen sniffled and then she lifted her head to look at Lars with her eyes, the whites of which now left yellowed and jaundiced. She was like Ellen back in New Orleans, a dying woman with nothing left to lose and a whole manner of answers to give in her lack of coherent speech.  
“I—I—I promised,” she stammered, her body violently shaking, “—not—n-not—to tell—anyone—hic—that—that—th-that—”  
“Yes?”  
“—Wayne cheated—on Mia—”  
Lars' jaw dropped open.  
“WHAT!” Mia shouted.  
“—what?” he choked out.  
“Y-Yes.”  
“When?” he asked her.  
“—she cheated on him with—with—that—that tall guy—from Seattle—”  
“What tall guy?” Lars demanded. “Are you talking about Ben Shepherd?”  
“Are you talking about Sonia?” Mia demanded.  
“N-No—hic—”  
Lars turned to her with a baffled expression on his face.  
“Angela,” he mouthed to her, and she nodded at him.  
“—the guy with—with—w-with—the mustache—”  
Lars returned to her.  
“Chris?”  
Jen gurgled in her throat but never replied. Lars stood back up to face Mia, who clutched at the lapels of her robe.  
“So Doorknob cheated on you with Angela, and then Angela had an affair with Chris before she got engaged to Ben—God, and I thought I was fucked up.” He returned to Jen there on the floor.  
“But when did this affair take place?” he asked her in a soft voice. “When did Mia's husband cheat on her?”  
“—b-before—” she sputtered out.  
“Before? Before when?”  
“—y-y—”  
“Yes? Yes?” he coaxed her.  
“—you.”  
They both fell silent.  
“Me,” he answered, unsure of what to think right then. “He cheated on her before I even showed up. And then Angela came after Sonia and me with a hatchet—but that is what I don't understand. What was her motivation there?”  
He turned to face Mia, who shrugged at him.  
“My guess is—out of spite?”  
“That's pretty intense to do it out of spite,” he told her. He climbed to his feet right then. “Do you want me to tell you?”  
“Please,” she beckoned him.  
“I looked up Ashley's manuscript from her interview with Kurt, the same day Jerry and I came down here and went out to the warehouse.”  
“You looked up her manuscript?” Mia was appalled by that. “Why?”  
“Because I—” He closed his eyes and wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. “—I didn't believe she cheated on James. I was hoping to look for any sign of it confirming she did, and I found nothing. That's how I know all that, especially Nirvana having Aaron as their drummer, a different drummer other than Chad.”  
“The—The manuscript—” Jen stammered, lifting her head and showing them her eyes rolling towards the back of her head.  
“You know about it?” Lars asked her, whirling around to face her.  
“—Ash-Ashley—gave—g-gave a-a—a copy of it—”  
“The fuck, to whom?”  
Jen bowed her head again.  
“Jen? Who did Ashley give a copy of the manuscript to?” Lars demanded. She remained silent.  
“Jen?” Mia called her. “Jen?”  
They glanced at one another again.  
“I say we go to the house,” he suggested.  
“Liv's house or Ashley's?” Mia raised an eyebrow.  
“No. Their house.” He nodded at Jen, and she gaped at him.  
“What! Are you crazy?”  
“Olivia told me all press releases are kept under lock and key,” he pointed out to her, “now unless your ex really is that big of a callous bastard, he will leave it out for us to find. If we take his copy of Ashley's manuscript, we have something to use against him and Angela. Now, come on—let's get dressed. And her some dried toast and mouth wash.”


	118. Chapter 118

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “But on the corner,  
> the jury's sleepless.  
> We found your weakness  
> and it's right outside our door.  
> Now testify”  
> -”Testify”, Rage Against the Machine

Jen had fallen asleep in Mia's hallway by the time the two of them had gotten dressed and stepped out to the fading daylight to her car there in the driveway. Lars stood on the walkway with his hands in his pockets as he watched her lock the door.  
“What I want to know is how did Jen get here?” he wondered aloud. “Given she is as smashed as she is right now.”  
“She knows her way over here by heart, but other than that, I don't have any idea.” Mia adjusted the strap on her purse before she strode down the walkway to the car. He climbed into the passenger seat and buckled himself in when something in the side mirror caught his attention. Something spindly and made of metal resting on the sidewalk next to the mouth of the driveway.  
“Mia—” he caught her attention while never lifting his gaze from the mirror.  
“Yes?”  
“Look in your mirrors.”  
She took a glimpse into her side mirror and then the rear view mirror between their heads. She knitted her eyebrows together at the sight of what was back there.  
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked aloud.  
“It is.”  
“It's a—bicycle. She rode over here on a bike.”  
“Drunk.”  
“Drunk.”  
She fetched up a sigh as she inserted one of the keys into the ignition.  
“Be careful not to hit it,” he warned her. “Actually, you know what? Here—” He climbed out of the car and padded down to the mouth of the driveway: it was a small bicycle, like one belonging to a child, with white handles and a bright pink glittery framework. Jen let it lay on the sidewalk, away from the tires of the car, but he worried if she had taken a bike without someone knowing. He picked it up by the handles and walked it over to the bushes: careful so as to not let it fall onto either side, he placed the end of the right handle against the top branch of the bush. Once he had steadied it, he returned to the car and buckled himself back into the seat.  
“It was like a kid's bike,” he told her, as she started up the car, “like it would be too small for even me.”  
“She rode that thing from—who knows where? God.”  
They backed out of the driveway and onto the street, and they dorve to the Davidson's house, which by the look of it was empty. No cars in the driveway, no lights to be seen shining out of the living room window or on the porch.  
“Doesn't look like anybody's home?” he wondered aloud, as they headed to the far end of the block.  
“I know a way in, though,” she assured him as they turned the corner so the car remained out of sight. “I know how to break out, but I also know how to get inside, especially when nobody's home.”  
“What do you mean, 'you know how to break out'?”  
She pulled the brake and switched off the engine.  
“When we all went up to Bainbridge Island together, and Ashley and I drove up together, I was here at this house and Jen told me to go through the door. But I went through the front door instead. But I do know a way in, though.”  
She climbed out of the car first, and then he followed her back down the sidewalk to the dark house.  
“Keep your head down, just in case,” she encouraged him, and they ducked down across the front lawn towards the side of the house. She gestured for him to stop as they approached the edge of the house: Lars had almost ducked down onto his knees by the time she flashed him the “okay” sign. They crept along the small strip of dirt between the side of the house and the fence separating them from the neighboring property. They reached the back porch of the house, where they were met with the back door and a pair of rickety wooden lawn chairs; right before them, on the outside of the porch, stood two windows, one to the guest bedroom and the other to the bathroom. Lars lingered right behind her as she peeked in through both windows.  
“Okay, nobody's home,” she concluded as she held onto the outside edge of the bathroom window.  
“Not the back door?” he asked her.  
“It's locked, I'm gonna tell you that right now—here, I'll open the window and climb in, and then I'll go around and unlock the back door for you. You don't need to crouch down, either.”  
He stood up right next to the edge of the bedroom window as she lifted it open for herself. She poked her head in to make sure she was not about to climb onto something fragile or important. She then lifted her right leg and bowed her head under the edge of the window.  
“Would you like my help?” he offered.  
“Oh, no, I got it,” she assured him as she climbed in through the window with ease. He watched her stumble inside, and then he turned his head to examine the back yard next to him. The fading daylight had left the incoming grass shrouded in dark shadows: small patches of dirt dotted the grass and he wondered what had happened back here when no one was looking.  
A click on the back door caught his attention, followed by the back porch light switching on and shining golden yellow light over the grass. The back door swung open, and Mia stepped out of the house, and gestured for him to come inside. He bolted to the steps of the porch, and scurried into the house with her, and closed the screen door behind him. He found themselves in the tiny dim lit kitchen, but not for long as she led him out to the dining room and then to the hallway leading back to the rest of the house; they passed a door which hung ajar by about half of an inch. Mia opened the door and they were met with a dark stairwell.  
Lars swallowed as she guided him down the shabby wooden steps into the darkness; a few of the steps creaked underneath his weight, and for once he felt a true need to lose a couple of pounds. He dared not grip onto the banister to his left lest he get a handful of splinters.  
The smell of old paper lingered in the air around him; once they reached the bottom of the stairs, Mia pressed her hand against the wall next to them and flicked on the overhead light, a stray lightbulb shining pale yellow light over the whole basement. Lars rounded her there on the bottom step for a closer look for himself. Before them stood a series of stacks of papers next to a heavy wooden desk adjacent to the wall, and a pair of desk chairs with wheels on the feet. A fax machine and a short stack of three wooden drawers stood up against the base of the banister. Lars spotted a heavy black floor lamp next to the desk, and next to that a short stairwell leading to the cellar doors.  
“This is the basement slash office,” said Mia.  
“I can see that.”  
“When you said look for the manuscript here in the house, this was the room I immediately thought of.”  
He rubbed his hands together.  
“So, shall we get started?” he suggested, and with that he lunged for the desk, and took a seat in the closest desk chair. He scanned the top of the desk, at all of the stray papers and pens and pencils. He lifted some of the papers only to find handwritten notes on some of them; the door closing behind him caught his attention, and he turned to see Mia shutting the basement door at the top of the stairs.  
“Just in case somebody comes home,” she explained.  
“Oh, I see—” He hesitated at one sheet of lined paper with nigh intelligible scrawl written, single spaced, front and back. He examined more closely to find it was the rough, handwritten manuscript to an interview with Mikayla de la Garza. Once Mia had reached the bottom of the stairs, he spotted another sheet of lined paper, again with the exact same scrawl, but with some woman named Patty.  
“Look at all of this,” he gestured to the desk, “I thought I was a slob.”  
He picked up another sheet of paper. “Hang on, hang on, these are notes right here, from him talking to—Trent? It looks as though he was trying get dirt on Trent.”  
“What the fuck!”  
“Yeah, it says here—from what I can tell, anyways, Jesus, I thought I had shitty handwriting—he spoke to Trent about you of all things—God, I can't hardly read it. But it looks like it says here—” He placed the tip of his finger near the middle of the page, on the left side, “—that he—Trent, that is—just has a thing for Mia, for you, but that was all he could find out about it. Looks like he also interviewed Mikayla—says he couldn't find anything there, either.”  
“Because I've known Mike for a long time,” she pointed out, “and she's known him for a long time, too. She knows what he's like. Olivia knows what he's like, too.”  
He set down the paper on the seat of the chair next to him and continued to shuffle through everything in hopes to find something similar to that butter yellow manuscript he had read in Olivia's house.  
“So if you were reading Ashley's manuscript,” Mia wondered aloud, “to find out if she and Kurt actually had an affair with one another that day, and Tracy was there, why would she even break up with James? I don't get it.”  
Lars picked up a yellow sticky note to read more scrawl put down in bright red ink.  
“'His name is James—he goes by Kurt.'”  
He frowned and glanced back up at Mia, who raised an eyebrow at that.  
“Oh!” he gasped.  
“What?”  
“Kurt must have lied and said his name was James to him,” he suggested. “But that still does not answer that question, though. Why would Ashley break up with James—and then James went back to her when we—flew back here today… See, I remember telling James—the day after you and I broke up that you ran back to Portland to get something.”  
She shifted her weight.  
“I—technically did, too,” she confessed, “—I ran back to Portland to get back home, and fetch the love letters from Sonia to give them to Ben. I was in a hurry that morning, too, because of the ferry schedule. He was late getting back home for breakfast, too.”  
“So the next time it happened, Angela suspected him of having an affair because he was late coming home,” he followed along, “and then she must have caught him in the act. And then she came after—me and Sonia—with a—an ax.”  
They both fell into silence, the sole noise emerging from the refrigerator upstairs running.  
“Ashley broke up with James to protect him,” she concluded. “They must have assumed that things were going to get bad.”  
Lars nibbled on his bottom lip.  
“That could be very possible,” he answered in a soft voice, “I mean—you did lie to me about you being married to protect me.”  
“Indeed I did.”  
His eyes scanned the top of the desk and he spotted a particular sheet of paper near the wall. He picked it up to read it.  
“Olivia told me press releases are kept under lock and key,” he recalled, “and they have to go through red tape in order to sign a release form, and—”  
He flashed it at her.  
“—here it is.”  
She gasped, and took the paper to see for herself.  
“Work with the papers,” she breathed in disbelief, “he knows how to get around it.”  
Lars turned his head again and spotted another sticky note in the midst of the mess. He peeled it off of the top of the desk and read the rather neat penmanship in black ink.  
“'We royally fucked up and got the wrong son of a bitch – also Ben ran home to Mommy and Daddy,'” he read aloud. She stooped down next to him to read it for herself.  
“That's a woman's handwriting,” he remarked.  
“It is,” she agreed. “Most likely Angela's. 'The wrong son of a bitch'—is she referring to you?”  
“Or she might be referring to Chad.” He shrugged and then he stopped himself. “Wait, that's it!”  
“What's it?”  
“He beat up Chad instead, and thought it was me—because the day before, Jerry and I were trespassing at the warehouse and his dad caught us outside of the building. He must have asked Marcia about you the day before because they found out—” He flashed her a grave look. “—you weren't really dead.”  
He ran the tip of his tongue along the top of his bottom lip.  
“How did you take our break up?” he asked her.  
“I bawled my eyes out,” she admitted, a hurt expression appearing on her face; and Lars felt his stomach turn at the sight. “I was a mess. I was even crying on the way up again. Ben even put his arms around me to comfort me.”  
“And you—and your car,” he recalled, “—smelled of pandekager and me, too—” He turned his head to stare at the wall, but he scanned over the top of the desk as he followed along; “—because of my own aroma and because you went to the Swedish bakery. Angela must have put two and two together because you're a baker and Ballard is basically snippets of Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Reykjavik put together.”  
He turned to her with a glimmer in his eye; she raised her eyebrows at him and he could see the hurt look upon her face replace itself with an eager one.  
“So at some point,” he continued, “they were able to fetch the copy of Ashley's manuscript and find out and confirm Chad's name but they confused him with me. Or me with him, rather. Angela is with Ben, who introduced Chad to Nirvana, which means Angela must at very least, at the absolute bare minimum know of Chad.”  
“And yet she doesn't even know his full description,” she pointed out.  
“Right. Which means, you are either the biggest fucking moron to not know the difference between brown eyes and green eyes.”  
“Or a scar over the eye, either!”  
“Or a scar over the left eye, right! Or anything else associated with me. The other possibility is there was a game of telephone at play. Angela is someone who quote, unquote 'knows Ben, Chad, and Andy Wood.' Well does she really? If she actually knows them, like she would, say, a friend, then she would not participate in a such a roundabout petty power game such as that. Some friend she is.”  
He dropped the note back down onto the desk, and found another handwritten note, this time on heavy parchment paper.  
“'Good job, anyways—you are so smart, Ang. Much love, Wayne.' She is smart, but she is not that smart, mate.”  
He leaned back in the desk chair to show Mia his thighs and the soft roundness of his waist poking out over the band of his jeans.  
“You know,” he began, lowering his voice to that same husky tone, “we did it on that old mattress back when the two of you were still married. And you know—it got pretty hot between us. And now we are on his turf.”  
“You sure do like to live on the edge, don't you?” He peered up at the devilish grin spreading over her face.  
“Hey, ever since Cliff was killed, I am more than willing to be a man of leisure.” He flashed her a wink. She grinned at him when she turned her head back to the fax machine and the drawers stacked upon another.  
“Wait, what about over here?” she suggested. She crossed the floor and crouched down before the drawers. She picked something out of the top one, something with a butter yellow cover.  
“That's it!” he declared.  
The front door slammed upstairs. Both of them froze. Heavy footsteps padded over the floor overhead.  
“Shit,” she whispered; she turned her head to face him. “What should we do?”  
He licked his lips, both of which became dry within a matter of seconds. He sighed through his mouth in hopes to calm down his heartbeat.  
“First of all,” he whispered, “do not make a sound. Second—” He turned his head to the cellar doors on the other side of the room. “I really hope those are unlocked.”  
“I think they are,” she confessed in a light whisper, “I didn't see a lock.”  
“Okay—” He climbed to his feet and then, careful not to make any noise, he led her to the stairs and the double doors.  
“Do you have the manuscript?” he asked her as he set his fingers on the lock at the base of the door on the left.  
“I do,” she replied; he lifted the lock and pushed the door open, and they were met with cool evening air. The sky was still that deep rich purple, except now no light crossed the backyard. Lars rose out of the basement first and then he held the door for her to climb out. Careful not to make any more noise, he shut the cellar door, and led her to the other side of the house. Keeping his head bowed, they snaked around a row of low evergreen bushes back to the driveway, where they were met with a boxy black pick up truck. One corner of the windshield bore an oval white sticker; in the light of the front porch light, Lars could make out the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” inscribed on the sticker in bright red lettering. That same phrase as on the sign back at the warehouse.  
He swallowed again as he led Mia out onto the driveway, along the side of the truck and to the street. They reached the sidewalk and ducked over to the neighbor's house; once they were two houses away, they both straightened up and ran back to Mia's car. Panting, she flung open the driver's side door and slid into the seat; Lars almost dove into the passenger seat. She fired up the car with the copy of the manuscript on her lap, and they sped off into the incoming darkness like a couple of cat burglars.


	119. Chapter 119

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I don't care if you hurt me some more,  
> I don't care if you even the score.  
> You can knock me and I don't care,  
> you can mock me and I don't care,  
> you can rock me just about anywhere.  
> It's alright.”  
> -”You’re All I’ve Got Tonight”, The Cars

He let out a long low whistle as he ran his fingers through his hair. He then leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. To think they were so close to perhaps understanding Wayne's intentions and why everything that happened up to that point happened, and they had to run out of there. He wondered who had walked into the house at that moment, if that was either Wayne or Will, or both of them. He flashed back on the afternoon he and Jerry visited the warehouse outside of town, and the sneer Will had flashed him. He knew he was out for Lars, and perhaps it was a game of telephone in that Will described them as “a tall man with long blond hair and a short man with a round face and long brown hair.” A game of telephone, or Angela being messy: but on the other hand, he knew his band wasn't that big at the moment, whereas Nirvana had just come to fruition. There was still very little to be found of them, but on the other hand, Wayne had his hands in journalism: he knew how to cut through red tape and convince Olivia to let a copy of Ashley's manuscript go free. But one thing remained for certain and that was he and Mia had had a narrow escape out of that house.  
“Fuck, that was close,” he breathed.  
“I know,” she agreed with him; he glanced over at her leaning back in her seat. In the glow from the headlights, he could see she still kept the manuscript in her lap. “We're not going back to the house,” she told him in a flat voice.  
“What! Why?” he demanded.  
“Because of Jen, remember?”  
“Oh, right, right. What about the Bennetts' house?” he suggested.  
“After what happened between you and Sonia, not for a while, no way. And I doubt James and Ashley would want us to drop by, either, given they're trying to fix their relationship. My parents are out of the question, too. They want nothing to do with me right now.”  
“But—where are we going to go then?” he asked her.  
“I don't know,” she confessed. They fell silent for a moment before she spoke again. “Where in Lake Oswego did you and Jerry go?”  
“I—do not even remember now,” he admitted, “because it was dark and I was like really, really tired, because that was the day after you and I broke up and I could not get the room cool if it killed me, and so I slept perhaps all of three hours that night.”  
“Aw.”  
“And so I paid very little attention to where we were going,” he proceeded. “And all I know is we were within range of the water, like we pulled up near to this campground on the outskirts of town.”  
“Oh, I see.”  
“And there was a cafe nearby where we went for breakfast, and Jerry told me they specialized in Scandinavian food.”  
“Oh, how fun!” she declared, turning a corner onto a side street which would take them into downtown. “When does your tour pick up again?”  
“Whenever the hurricanes stop coming in,” he answered, blunt. “I remember the man in the restaurant we sought shelter in said we are currently in an El Nino.”  
“Okay, so that means,” she elaborated, “the hurricanes will not be as prevalent in the Gulf. I remember being a little girl in Puerto Rico during an El Nino season and we got probably all of two tropical storms then. And so, there might be another storm or so down there in New Orleans, but not very many.”  
“Which means, by the time the last one clears out,” he followed along, “I will be back on the road—I am going to say within a week. Right. And when is your next baking show?”  
“The next baking show is in July, in about a month. It's down in—San Francisco.”  
He beamed at her, and she peered over at him with a grin on her face.  
“And I have decided,” she continued, “with Sandra's approval, mind you—that to accompany my donuts and Marcia's macarons, we will make—” He turned to her with his eyebrows raised. She smacked her lips and eyed him with a rather seductive look.  
“—the quintessential Danish dessert,” she finished. “The one symbolic of baking.”  
He paused to think about it for a moment, and then it dawned on him.  
“Kringle?”  
“Kringle. Or 'Vienna bread', as Sandra called it.”  
“You are going to make kringle,” he stated.  
“Yes, we are,” she said, proud. “I mean, we make raspberry danishes. It only seems logical we could make Danish pretzels—it is the exact same puff pastry as the danishes. I decided we will make it with remonce, that sugary, buttery filling with cinnamon and marzipan. And I feel that if you are leaving soon, we must make it together.”  
“You want the two of us to make kringle together?”  
“Yeah.” She reached over from the steering wheel to stroke his thigh. The feelings had returned inside of his flesh, and when Jen burst into the house, he longed for those sensations again, on his waist, on his chest, and all up and down his limbs, but in particular his waist. He wanted her to rub his belly again, and before his departure from the Northwest for about a month.  
They rode through the quiet web that was suburban Portland until they reached Burnside Bridge, the half mile long draw bridge with the exposed walkways lined with elaborate railings and Renaissance style towers, and would thus take them into the heart of downtown, that is until Mia took a left turn three blocks prior to the entrance of the bridge. They rode all along the east bank of the river, until she turned right at the Sellwood Bridge, another draw bridge which spanned a fair distance, but one that lacked the same beauty as Burnside.  
“We have all but bypassed south Portland,” she told him as they crossed over the dark, but mellow waters of the Willamette River. Lars peered out the window and over the guard rail at the black waters two hundred feet down. He felt her hand still upon his thigh and he nibbled on his bottom lip.  
Once she cleared the bridge, they turned left and headed south.  
“We're only about three miles from Oswego,” she announced. Indeed, she drove them around the west bank of the river, in the dark, until the buildings and houses of southern Portland gave way to the dense pine forest. Soon, Lars recalled a couple of the bends in the road, and then they rounded a corner. The black waters of Lake Oswego loomed underneath the cozy cluster of lights from part of the town itself, and the evergreen trees rode along the edge of the road through the darkness. Mia halted at a stoplight for a moment until Lars spotted the cafe, now dark and buttoned up for the night, there on the side of the road.  
“There it is!” he declared, pointing out of the windshield.  
“That's the restaurant?”  
“Quite delicious pandekager, might I add.” In spite of the dim light from the headlights, he flashed her a smirk.  
“Well, let's see—” she began, but she never finished her statement as they rolled forward along the road to another cluster of pitch dark pine trees; Mia pulled over onto the side of the road so the cafe remained within their line of sight through their mirrors. She switched off the engine and once, she switched off the headlights so as to leave them in darkness, he watched her silhouette turn to him. He heard paper flopping onto the dashboard in front of them and then he felt the warmth of her breath on the side of his neck and face.  
“Do you wanna—stay here in the front or go in the back?” she asked him in a velvety voice. He smacked his lips and slithered the tip of his tongue out of his mouth: even though it was dark, he wanted her to see the gloss on the skin of his lips.  
“In the back. I was laying on my back after all.”  
“Except this time it's not raining,” she pointed out.  
“It is not raining.”  
He held onto the handle of the door and pushed it open, and climbed out into the cool crisp darkness. Keeping one hand on the side of the car, he found his way to the back door and yanked it open. He stuck his feet in first, and then stretched out his legs over the back seat and lay down flat on his back before closing the door shut over the crown of his head. The other door opened and she climbed in on top of his feet; she shut the door and stretched herself out over his body.  
“Come right this way, darling,” he coaxed her, “yes, there we go. Make yourself comfortable, skat.”  
He felt her undo the button on his jeans and, he felt her lift up the bottom of his shirt. He felt weak, and yet light at the same time. The touch of her fingers on his soft skin, the warmth of her body, the closeness of the back seat, and the fact they had removed themselves from civilization was enough to leave him feeling tender and relaxed. He wanted that touch, that soft caress more than anything right then.  
He parted his lips to give her an almost pained sounding moan from the inside of his throat.  
“Touch me—” he whispered. The tips of her fingers caressed the soft skin on his exposed belly, and then she ran her hand up towards his chest.  
“Still full, I see,” she breathed into his face.  
“Touch me—and don't ever lift a finger off from me right now. Please. Please—” He never got to finish because she ever so lightly placed her lips onto his, thus silencing him. The feeling was so soft, he may as well have melted into water. Her lips felt like silk; he put his arms around her and set his hands on her lower back. Butterflies swirled through his stomach and a swelling sensation emerged at the base of his spine. Every inch of his body felt so tight and rigid for what felt like so long, and Sonia's roughness never helped alleviate those feelings. She pressed her hips up against his soft belly once again; she moved her lips to the side of his neck and he let out a soft moan.  
She ran her fingers through his hair from the roots and out to the base of the seat. He felt her purse her lips against the skin on his collar bone, and she started to suck.  
“What are you—What are you—oh, I see what you are doing,” his voice broke, “—I see exactly what you are doing. Ah—ooooh, yes. Yes, right there. Right there, right there, right there—”  
He gritted his teeth when she ground the edges of her teeth for an ever so gentle nibble right on top of the bone. His eyes rolled up into his head: the feeling reminded him of the time she kissed his hip bone, but this was different.  
“Oh—Oh, holy—oh, yes—yes—mmm, yes, that's lovely. You just—grind me like a pepper grinder, skat—ja—mmmmm—ooh, ow, ouch—”  
“Did that hurt?”  
“A little bit, yes.”  
“Okay.”  
She pressed her lips to his collar for some more sucking and another moan escaped his throat.  
“The car is a-rockin',” she whispered into him.  
“Don't go a-knockin',” he retorted, feeling his eyes close. She giggled and then she returned to his collar for another nibble followed by another rounding of kissing him there. It was not as lovely as feeling her give him a biting hickey on his belly, but it was still enough for him to hold onto her hips and make love to her for a moment.  
Through the darkness, he watched her lift herself off of his body. He felt her sit on his thighs: he knew the fabric of her jeans separated her clit from the head of his dick. There was silence, and then he felt her poke and prod the extra skin on his belly.  
“What—What are you doing?”  
“Oh, I have been thinking about this since you came back today,” she told him, rubbing the silken flesh around his belly button. “I realized I never got a chance to play with your belly. You know, beyond a belly rub.”  
“That—actually feels—really good.” He chuckled at the feel of her fingers. “It kind of tickles.”  
“It's like playing with dough for bread,” she confessed; he felt her slid down his thighs and onto his knees. Her lips pressed against his skin there next to his belly button.  
“Oh, yes,” he groaned, closing his eyes, “yeah—yeah, yes. I will give you a thousand years to stop that, min skat. Yes. Yes. That is so, so very lovely.”  
“I'm just imagining your tummy getting all full tomorrow morning at the cafe back here and then you are like putty in my hands afterwards,” she confessed in a single breath.  
“I am soooo turned on right now,” was all he could say. She burst out laughing before she lay her lips on the same spot. That itch he couldn't scratch, and now, in the back woods outside of Portland, it was happening again. He need not let anyone distract either of them that night.


	120. Chapter 120

“Is it morning? It is. Opening my eyes just enough to see the light filtering inside. Where am I?  
“Oh, right, right, right, right, right. I am still in the back seat of her car. I see the pine trees looming upside down over our heads outside of the car now.  
“Where is she? Oh, she's right upon my chest. Her hands, as far as I can tell, have never lifted off of my waist. My shirt has ridden all the way up toward my chest and my hand is asleep…”

“Darling? Honey pie?  
“God morgen, min skat. Kiss me—kiss me, please—  
“I'm thirsty. And I do not mean it like that, either, I really am thirsty.”

“Oh?”

“If you lay your hand on my stomach, you might feel it rumble. Something else might rumble, too.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“What if I just walk into that little cafe with my shirt pulled up to my chest like this? And then I take off my shoes and whip out the hose. Nah, that would be too much.”

“What the fuck happened there?  
“Oh, I see. That went through the seat? Was it raining last night?  
“Well, fuck. Anyways, enough chit-chat. Let us feed ourselves and fill our gullets with all the goods the little place down the block has to serve us.”

“Hello, Mr. Sun. Yes, I see you and feel you. Ouch.”

“Where should we put the manuscript? Not the glove compartment. I can see it being stolen there. How about under the seat? Yes! Under my seat, too.”

“Flip a turn … oh, hey, there's the campground Jerry, Layne, and I stayed at before. Another hundred yards or so, and we would have been in the exact same spot.”

“Holy fucking hell, this place smells good. Let's try the counter this time.”

“A cup of black tea and the large stack of pandekager, behage.”

“No, I doubt either of them will suspect it was us there in his basement. We boogied out of there pretty quickly. But it is hard to say. Besides, what is he going to do? You are out of his picture and as far as Doorknob and his father know, I am still in New Orleans. Hang tight, I have to use the little boys' room—”

“…fewer things in life are more pleasurable as taking a piss after you haven't done it since you got back to your girlfriend's house…”

“Hello, my love, I am back, yes.”

“Oh, that water is perfect.  
“I take back what I said before: fewer things in life are as pleasurable as taking a piss after you haven't done it since you got back to your girlfriend's house or taking a big fat drink of water after not drinking any for hours.”

“I wanted us to sit at the counter because I wanted to watch these boys make our food. It is just outright sexy to watch it being made when you have a hungry belly and all you wanna do is eat up.”

“Putting knobs of butter in those skillets. Hot skillets. Hot like you, darling.  
“Pfff, remember when we were in Mama's the first time and I kept throwing out shit like that at you? Yeah, I am going to do that constantly every time we are in public, he he he.  
“In the oven? In the oven. With sugar! And strawberries that look as though they had been picked right off of the vine just this morning.  
“My God, those pancakes look so pristine and smooth. And every time he takes them out of the oven in front of him so they rest in a warm place, I swear to fuck, that stack is just getting bigger and bigger.  
“Oof, those sausage patties smell delicious. There is a bit of black pepper in there I can tell. Did I lie, darling? This place is rad.”

“Oh boy. Oh, boy!  
“That's a lot of pandekager. No, that is a lot of pandekager. Perhaps the most I have seen. Jesus. JESUS.”

“'I want you to eat', she says. Okay. Indeed, it does smell good. The cakes are golden, and there is a fair amount of butter on here to go right to my thighs and my ass. So much sugar! Oh, yes, strawberries, please.  
“Fuck it. You know what? Just feed me the strawberries when I am finished here.”

“I am going to fucking do this. Let's fucking do this.”

“Nah, she is the coffee drinker. I will have about five cups of tea before I am done here.”

“Melting in my mouth—I can feel the butter going right to my waist and my round face. These are ever so slightly crispy and yet very lovely, just like the last time. Damn. So damn consistent.  
“How many are here?  
“Ho, boy. I might have something orbit the whole middle of my body when I am finished here.”

“Huh?”

“What! When was that?  
“Last night? Well, when the fuck did she do that?  
“—unsure if alcohol was involved.' Oh, come on. She was within range of the bridge and two rivers. Surely some foul play had to have happened, as shitty as that is. Fucking hell, that—that kills me. Sigh.  
“Eh, there's always pandekager, which is heavenly, by the way. How's your sausage and rice, darling? It smells divine.”

“Why, yes, I would love a bite.  
“Oh—my—fuck.”

“So what should we do after breakfast? Shall we go back to the house, or—?  
“Oh, yes. I will lay flat on my back and let you play with my big bloated tummy until the cows come home, darling. And then we shall make whoopie pies after that. Ooh, that is another thing you should make at the baking show is whoopie pies.”

“Feed me? Behage. Just take that fork and dip those pieces into the sugar and the butter and slip it right onto my tongue for me.”

“Easy there, min skat. Granted, we are in a public place, however it was one thing when we were with Olivia and Mikayla the first time and we had a table obscuring my waist. Not to mention, it was the one thing that hid you unfastening the button on my jeans. We are at a counter and—  
“Oh. Oh. OH.”

“If you are going to slip your hand underneath my shirt, and poke my increasingly full belly, and then you better expect a rather tender round of silky love in the near future. Ohhhhh, baby.”

“And when I say 'increasingly full', I mean it. This stack is... filling to say in the least. More so than the last time. Perhaps it is because this time I have a girl back with me.”

“I want to thank you for bringing me back out here, even if the circumstances were unfortunate and on edge. Laying flat on my back and feeling your hands all over my body, all over my stomach and my hips and my chest… I feel so much more loosened up, like I can do anything with you now. I really can, too. I feel I can do anything with you, a privilege I have never granted unto anyone before. I am glad that you and I are making up, too. I have missed you… dearly.”

“Oof, I'm getting full. But this stack of pandekager is so good, and so warming. On one hand, I am sad that summer is a mere glimmer away because the warm feeling in my belly is going to feel like overkill, but then again… I picture us going to the Oregon Coast again and I can finally be a merman.  
“Oh, yes! After the baking show, we can go back to Crescent City! Yes! It is a plan, darling. Let us toast to that—  
“A few more bites… no, fuck it, I will just eat the whole thing. I have not eaten this much since before you and I broke up the first time, and I had that sweet little potbelly coming in. I must make up for lost flesh.”

“I really overdid it this time. No, I mean it. I overdid it like fuck. This is right up there with the whole red velvet cake. Oh my.  
“Forgive me, everyone. I am just a boy with an overfilled tummy. Oh—hold me, please. I have missed this feeling and yet—it sort of—hurts. Ow—oh—”

“Yes, let us go back to the car now. And yes, please, I would like a nice, long belly rub. Oh, mmm—God—oh, fucking hell—”

“Oh—oof. Hey, darling. Could you—Could you do me a favor, pretty please? I have been a good little boy, thus I must ask you. Please. Let me ask you—actually, it is not really a question, it is more of a request—  
“Press one for Danish.”

“Hver gang jeg stikker min tunge ud, skal du se mig løbe over din krop som en slange.  
“I'm not telling you. Mwah.”

“Only if you kiss me.”

“I feel drunk, even though I have not had a drink in a… a while—”

“AH! Oh. My word. My grandparents and everyone back in the land of the Danes felt that belch. It felt good, too!”

“Ohhh—don't mind if I lean back. You don't mind, do you?”

“Eh, I try my best to look sexy for you. I want to look sexy for you. I want to be perfect for you. I just—I try my best all around, especially now.”

“Wait. What are you doing? What are you pulling over for?”

“Oh. Oh—Oh, I see what you are doing. I see exactly what you are doing. By the lake!  
“So, er—tell me, darling. Since it is true that—when there is an El Nino in our region here that we get a shitload of moisture upon us while it has been shaved dry back in your neck of the woods. But is it true that—there is a round of an El Nino ready to thrust itself down upon me and my Danish ass? And, even if there isn't, we are near a lake after all.”

“Fucking hell. It is true. It's very true. Oh—darling, please be gentle with me. Too much pressure and my belly might do—something—drastic. Please, darling—I am so fucking full. Please, ever so gently, so lightly, and so softly—oh, please my love, mmmm—  
“Oh, yes, the feeling is tugging down inside of my stomach. Yes—oh, yes, please.  
“—this is a beautiful feeling. Love so soft and silky. It no longer hurts now.”

“May I ask of you another question? An actual question this time?  
“Shall I change my shirt before we return to Portland?  
“I know all of my clothes are back in the house—including my Venom and Motorhead shirts, but I can go shirtless if you want. If he is there at the house, he might not recognize me without a shirt. He is not going to want to fuck with me, either.”

“Okay, you got me. I also want to take off my shirt for you, too. Again, I try to be sexy.  
“But the fact remains and returning to what we were doing—I want you to be soft with me. Please be soft and be gentle. Please—I am begging you. I feel delicate right now. When I ate that red velvet cake that time, I felt so tender and delicate right underneath your hand. It is the same feeling now. The exact same feeling. I am like putty in your hands and I long for your tender touch right—there—”

“Don't mind the egg, please. Just kiss me. All of your sweetest kisses.  
“Crack an egg on my egg? Ha, yes! It is good for the hair after all.”

“You wanna—you wanna handle me?”

“Don't stop looking at me. Stop looking at me. What are you doing? Don't stop. No. Please. I don't know. Echhh—OH. Easy there, easy there—ooh, that's good. That is GOOD. Forgive me if this is foolish of me but I should have known you were married because you do all of these moves like a fucking pro, baby. Shit, you are more of an expert than I am and the biggest thing I know is sixty nine.  
“Before I forget, I lied about learning that from Kirk. No, I learned it from Dave and his girlfriend at the time. Yes, it is true.  
“MMPH! Okay, yes, I deserved that. But still. Look at me, look at me, look at me. Please still be gentle with me. Please, darling, I am begging you. We are two people who love one another—we must be gentle with each other, especially when my belly is ready to pop.  
“GAH! That tickled! Oh, I see what you are doing. But I can hardly move, though, so I can't blow a raspberry on you. Jeg kan kun holde min tunge ud på dig og billede mig selv køre den over din krop som en slange.”

“Who?  
“Ugh, no. Again, right as I am getting interested and feeling all soft on the inside.”


	121. Chapter 121

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, understand I don't want to do this, but this fic lost a bookmark this morning, and in all honesty, it shook me. So if it happens again (or if I don't get more than 2 reads on this next chapter), I'll stop updating. Yes, I know the past few chapters haven't been as racy but I warned I was going long: I can see it all the way to the end, too, so trust me on this. I'm pulling a double shift with Painted in a Corner now, too; and besides, given the length, it is going to be complex. I know I'm being read (almost 1200 reads? That's a bigger amount than anything I've ever posted, so... thank you for that, really), but please don't give up on me xo

Lars kept his seat reclined a bit to ease the pressure on his stomach as Mia followed Ashley back to the Bennetts' house. He had the button on his jeans unfastened and one hand laying upon the space between his belly and his chest. That really was a lot of pandekager there before him and for a moment, he swore his eyes had grown much larger than his own stomach and thus it ached him a little bit. But he loved the warm feeling inside of him and he wanted it to stay with him.  
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Mia driving with her left hand upon the edge of the wheel, and he smirked at the sight of her waist within reach. He lifted his left arm for a grope of her waist and she flinched at the touch of his fingers.  
“Stop, I'm driving,” she brushed him off with a giggle. He was almost inclined to roll onto his side and poke out his hip for her but he felt as though he had a large bowl of jelly resting right in the middle of his body. Too full to do anything but relax right there right next to her.  
“Hang on, baby,” she told him, and he clasped onto the center console and the top of the door underneath the window, and she turned right around the corner. Once they straightened out, he relaxed his grip; when the sound of the pavement shifted to a different tone, he lay his hands back on top of his belly and relaxed once more. The top of one of the Renaissance style buildings whizzed past his window and he knew they were on Burnside Bridge. He closed his eyes and swallowed; he tried to keep the butterflies from welling up inside of him again lest that full warmth fade out to a heavy dead weight.  
He felt them slow down, and he clasped onto the center console and the edge of the door once again in anticipation of turning a corner. Never opening his eyes, he felt her turn to the left this time.  
At one point, he felt her hand rest on his belly, right near his waist. Her fingers pulsated as if she was tickling him, and then she moved her palm in a small circle for a gentle rub. He lifted his hands and rested the backs on his forehead; he felt her lift up the bottom hem of his shirt a bit to touch his skin.  
“This—This feeling right here,” he remarked, “this will never get old.”  
“And I love doing this, too,” she told him, “your skin is so soft here—” He felt them slow to a stop. “—and so kissable.”  
He felt her lips brush on his skin near his belly button: the very feel of it tickled him and a light giggle escaped his mouth. She gave him a light pat before they rolled forward again.  
Soon, he felt her slow down the car and they pulled over onto the side of the street. He rubbed his eyes before lifting himself onto his elbows. He peered out the window to behold the sight of Marcia and Sonia seated on the front step. Dave stood next to the former with his hands pressed to his hips.  
Lars unfastened his seat belt, fixed his shirt, and hoisted the seat back into an upright position before he stumbled out onto the sidewalk. He ran a hand through his hair and squinted up at the mid morning sun before Mia rounded the front of the car, and they strode up to the front step in unison. Both Marcia and Sonia had on Chuck Taylors and square black sunglasses tugged down the bridges of their noses a bit, and wore their wet looking hair loose about their heads.  
“I didn't know I was friends with the Go-Go's,” Mia teased them; Lars turned his head to see Ashley hurrying towards them from across the lawn, and then he returned to the doorstep with a small smile upon his face.  
“Hello, Sonia,” he greeted her, and she showed him a quaint smile and mouthed the word “hi” to him.  
“What's up with your jeans?” asked Marcia and he glanced down at the top of his jeans poking out from under the hem of his shirt; he then clasped a hand to his belly.  
“I ate so many pancakes,” he replied with a crooked smile; Dave tossed his hair back from his face and flashed him a smirk.  
“Oh?” she teased him.  
“We have a tummy absolutely chock full of home here,” Mia added, reaching around his lower back with one arm and then patting his belly with the other hand. “We weren't fucking around this morning.”  
Ashley approached them from behind: she had recolored the blue streaks in her hair, this time more of a turquoise blue to better contrast her red ringlets.  
“So Jen's gone now,” she concluded, shoving her car keys into her purse and then pressing her hands to her hips.  
“Yeah,” answered Mia, her expression growing solemn, “—she fell asleep the hallway and I guess she must've woken up and gone outside. Thank you for locking my door, Ash.”  
“So what's going to happen now?” asked Sonia.  
“I don't have any idea,” confessed Mia. “All we can do is continue to live our lives and hope Wayne and his dad learn their lesson from this. What's weird is I don't even feel sad. Well, like I do feel down because Jen was the whole reason I—I really stayed in a relationship with him, but I really don't know now.”  
Lars felt her stroke his lower back and he sighed through his nose at her touch. It was official and clear to him that she and him could be together, but he still had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind and in the pit of his stomach, the feeling that something could cascade down upon the two of them.  
“Also I still have your guitar at my house, Mia,” Ashley reminded her.  
“Oh, yeah, that's right.”  
“I also have something I want to give you,” Dave added, wagging a finger at her. Mia let go of Lars, and Marcia and Sonia stood to their feet to let them into the house; Ashley shut the door behind her. Lars turned his head to look into the living room and the sight of Dave kneeling down behind the couch for something. He slipped his hands into his pockets as Dave revealed a copy of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on vinyl.  
“Here, Mia,” he told her with a smile, “a little bird told me you like the Beatles.”  
Right then, Lars felt a little tug on the inside of his full stomach and an idea crossed his mind. Perhaps this was Dave paying his respects back in the wake of all of the affairs, or perhaps it was because he and Trent kept her protected at all times while Lars fell out of the picture for a moment. But he knew he would have to search around for a blank cassette tape if and when he found the chance.  
He followed Ashley into the kitchen even though he had very minimal desire to eat anything. Instead, he lunged for the cupboard with the glasses and poured himself a cup of cool water from the pitcher on the counter. Marcia and Sonia took their seats at the kitchen table with large mugs of coffee in their hands and their sunglasses upon the surface of the table before them. Lars downed the glass in three large gulps before pouring himself a second cup.  
“Quite the thirsty boy,” Sonia remarked; before he could take a sip, Lars raised an eyebrow at her.  
“Don't be getting any ideas now, Sonia darling,” he scoffed, wagging a finger at her. He tipped the glass into his mouth and downed the cool crisp water in a few swallows; he turned to the sink behind him to rinse out the glass and stick it into the drainer. He stuck his hand under the faucet so as to wet his skin and then run his fingers through his hair again. He did that twice and then switched off the water.  
He whirled around to look at the two girls flashing him a baffled look.  
“I haven't showered in a few days,” he confessed, his scalp feeling damp and cool.  
“So that's what that smell is,” Marcia teased; he lifted an arm to sniff his armpit and Sonia burst out laughing. Mia entered the room with the vinyl copy of Sergeant Pepper and copies of two other albums both pressed against her thighs.  
“What you got there?” asked Marcia; and she showed them the two albums, one in each hand: the other two consisted of a brand new copy of Black Sabbath's Paranoid still wrapped in the cellophane and a limited edition of Pink Floyd's Animals.  
“Dave just gave me these,” she answered, “he told me to play the shit out of them and take notes from them to better learn how to play guitar.”  
Lars cleared his throat right then and turned to Marcia.  
“Do you ladies have any blank tapes laying around?” he asked them.  
“Blank tapes? Like—cassettes?” Sonia followed along.  
“Yes.”  
They both glanced at one another with a knowing expressions on either of their faces. Sonia leaned across the side of the table to whisper something into Marcia's ear, and they both giggled at the same time. Lars nibbled on his bottom lip and then he peered over at Mia, who returned the records to the front of her body. A slight brush crossed her face.  
“What'd you say?” she demanded.  
“We'll tell you later,” Marcia assured her with a wink. She turned back to Lars. “Anyways, yes, we do have some blank tapes in the closet in the downstairs hallway. Don't take too long, big boy.” She flashed him a wink and he lunged for the doorway when Mia stopped him.  
“Why's your hair wet?”  
He took a brief glimpse over at the two them right as they began to snicker at one another.  
“I—haven't showered in a while,” he told her, reluctant. Mia squinted at him before she stepped out of his way and he slid out of the kitchen into the hallway. Disregarding the state of his jeans or the full feeling in his stomach, he slid the door back and searched over the wooden shelves. The one right over his head beheld a small stack of cassette tapes, all of which still in their containers. He took the first one off of the top of the stack, its paper on the inside crisp and untouched. He stuffed it into his front pocket and shut the door before returning to the kitchen right as Mia headed towards the front door.  
“Where are you going, darling?” he asked her.  
“Just taking these out to the car and then I'm running over to Ashley's place for my guitar. Why—you wanna go back to the house for a little—” She fluttered her eyelashes as she shrugged her shoulders at him. “—you know, a little loving?”  
He ran the tip of his tongue along the edges of his top front teeth; out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Marcia and Sonia gazing over at them with intent.  
“Hang on a second,” she lowered her voice to a near whisper, “because I have a key to the bakery in my purse. Why go home when I say we go in there and—have a little fun.”  
“Like the time you fed me that red velvet cake?” he asked her, raising an eyebrow.  
“Kind of. In the mean time, fix your pants and then follow me back out there, baby.”


	122. Chapter 122

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Where'd the mother fucking cheese go at?”  
> -“Where'd The Cheese Go?”, Ween

Mia and Lars settled back into the car, even though he had not refastened the button on his jeans despite her request: he still felt far too full to feel comfortable with them buttoned around his waist. He helped her lug her black guitar case into the back seat of the car, even with the band of his jeans clinging to his hip bones. The pressure had subsided enough on the inside that he could sit in an upright position.  
Before she started up the car, she leaned over the center console to kiss his face and the side of his neck.  
“Always be my soft boy,” she whispered into his ear.  
“Of course, my love,” he whispered back to her.  
She pulled forward and they wound through a few of the side streets before meeting up with Multnomah Boulevard again. Lars recalled the bakery he had strode by and wondered about telling her of it given the success of Smell the Magic. There was that stale danish as well and he hoped their pastries stayed fresh as they pulled up to the stop light next to the bakery and he could see the front window display hung dark and vacant.  
“Mia, you see this bakery right here?” He pointed out the window.  
“Yes.”  
“I walked by here when Sonia and I hooked up, and I was hungry, you know.”  
“Right.”  
“And I went around back 'cause the chick in there had lugged out this bag full of danishes. And once she went back inside there, I opened the bag and fished out one of the danishes, and took a bite.”  
“And?”  
He peered over at her right as she raised her eyebrows in question at him.  
“Stale.”  
“Stale?”  
“Yeah, like eating cardboard.”  
“Oh, God! Grody!”  
“Yeah. It was disgusting. Just outright nasty. My grandmother would have been so ashamed of that.”  
The light turned green and they rolled forward to the heart of northern Portland. Lars kept his eye on the streets around them all the way to Smell the Magic: the nagging sensation inside of him persisted, but he could put his finger on it even as they pulled up to the curb before the front door. Once he climbed out of the car, he took a moment to adjust the waist band on his jeans and then, once Mia stepped upon the curb next to him, he put his arm around her shoulders and they ambled up to the door.  
She took the key out from her pocket to unlock the door, and they were met with the cool fresh smell of bread that had been baked in the days before. Once they stepped inside of the bakery, she leaned to the side to switch on the lights. The soft yellow light washed over the inside of the bakery and the empty shelves on the inside of the glass display next to the check out counter.  
“It's so weird coming in here and there are no pastries,” he remarked.  
“Just you wait, baby boy,” she assured him, cramming the keys back into her jeans pocket and locking the door from the inside as a do not disturb sign of sorts.  
“You are going to make something for me?” he asked, feeling his heart flutter in his chest.  
“We are,” she corrected him, her eyes gleaming.  
“We are?”  
“Yes.” She reached out to take his hand. “Come with me.”  
He took her hand and she led him into the back room with the ovens and all of their baking tools. She set down her purse on top of one of the ovens before she handed him a clean red and white dish towel.  
“Tuck that into your jeans,” she told him; and he slipped the short end over the top edge of his waist band.  
“Wash your hands,” she added, gesturing to the sink on the other side of the room, “always wash your hands.”  
He slipped past her and cleaned off his hands with warm water and the soft smelling soap. He returned to her right as she took out a small silvery metal bowl and a short brown jar of yeast, followed by a long bright red cookie sheet, and then a large metal bowl and a small knife. She turned to him right as he wiped his hands on the dish towel.  
“Tie up your hair, too,” she advised him, taking out a roll of wax paper for the cookie sheet. “Here—”  
She returned to her purse and searched for something; she soon took out a piece of silvery string.  
“This came off my guitar about a week ago,” she said, handing him the string. He licked the top of his bottom lip as he took the string and slipped it underneath his hair.  
“This is very rock n' roll of you,” he remarked, tying the string around his hair three times before he tied a loose knot on top. She returned to him with a brief clasp of his hips and a scooping up the small bowl to take to the faucet.  
“What should I do, darling?” he offered.  
“Well, let's see—I'm going to fill this up with warm water and put the yeast in here. Go into the fridge here and take out the butter and see if you can soften it up.”  
“Shall I soften it on my skin?”  
“On your skin?” she chuckled. “Well, we'll be using three quarters of it so when we're done you could probably rub it on your belly and your chest, and then I might—I just might lick it off of you.” She flashed him a wink before heading over to the sink and he padded over to the refrigerator for the stick of butter in question. He held it in the palm of his hand, in all of its chilled firmness wrapped in the filmy paper.  
“Shall I heat this on one of the burners?” he asked her over the rush of the water from the faucet.  
“Yes, but—erm,” she began, switching off the water and returning to him, “—put it in a sauce pan, though, because doing it like that will be an absolute mess otherwise.” He nodded and returned to the cupboards in search of a sauce pan of some sort underneath the counters. A small metal one rested on the shelf near his knees, and he picked it up, and placed it on one of the burners on the neighboring stove top. He peeled off the paper to drop in the stick of butter and then he turned up the heat. Meanwhile, Mia unscrewed the lid of the yeast and scooped out a tablespoon to drop into the water. She set the bowl aside on one of the counters behind her before turning her attention back to the large bowl.  
“Okay, while the butter heats up there, could you grab me—” She hesitated for a moment. “—milk, an egg, sugar, salt, lemon extract, and flour, please?”  
“Milk, an egg, sugar, salt, lemon, and flour, okay.”  
He returned to the refrigerator and took out the small carton of whole milk followed by one brown egg; he closed the door with his hip before returning to her for a moment, and then he doubled back again to the pantry for the sugar, the salt, the lemon extract, and the sack of flour, all of which he cradled in his arms like a school boy carrying books.  
“Okay, let's see—”  
She poured into the large bowl a quarter cup of the milk, a quarter cup of the sugar, a half of a teaspoon of the extract, and a pinch of salt, and then cracked the egg open on the edge of the counter with one hand (“crack an egg on my egg,” he whispered into her ear and she giggled in response) before she reached for a whisk.  
“Okay, so let's just—beat this—gently—”  
“All mellow like you are giving my belly a massage?”  
“All mellow like I am giving your belly a massage, yes,” she echoed with a chuckle. “The butter should be fine, too, so take it off of the heat.”  
He turned the burner dial and removed the stick of butter off of the stove top. He held it in mid air before she gestured to the counter behind them, and he placed the sauce pan away from the heat where the butter could rest itself. He returned to her, bracing his body against her back; he could see a smile crossing her face at the feel of his belly against her lower back and his chest against her shoulder blades. He outstretched his right hand over hers to help her whisk up the dough. Meanwhile, he wrapped his left arm around her waist and held his lips close to her ear and the side of her face.  
“It is already smelling wonderful in here,” he told her.  
“The thought of all of this butter makes me so hot,” she whispered to him.  
“Have it all go right to my belly and my hips, darling,” he retorted.  
“Mmm… all of this milk and butter—no wonder your face is so round and so sweet.”  
“I am a dough boy. I was meant to be a soft dough boy, skat—” She turned around to give his belly a gentle little poke and he flinched back away from her. “Hey!”  
She gestured for him to come closer again.  
“Come back here, papacito. And bring the butter with you, too.”  
He picked up the sauce pan for a peek inside at the stick resting on the bottom, still intact but he could tell it was soft, soft like his flesh.  
“So—should we rub this on my belly or on my face?” he asked her as she poured a bit of flour into the mixture before her.  
“Well, most of it is going on here.” She used her free hand to gesture to the wax paper on the cookie sheet.  
“How much is most, though?”  
“About—three quarters.” He peeked over her shoulder at the sight of her pouring the activated yeast into the bowl to better form the dough.  
“Three quarters! Significant. From what I remember back home, it really is quite a bit of milk and butter.”  
He tipped the sauce pan onto its side and the butter tumbled out onto the wax paper.  
“I assume we butter this bad boy up,” he followed along.  
“Yes, we do. See that spatula right there?”  
“I do.” He picked up the flat spatula and held it up to his mouth as if he was about to lick the head.  
“Spread that butter around—like you're about to rub a bunch of lube all over my pie,” she whispered into his ear.  
“Alright, darling—I mean—min, skat.” He flashed her a wink before he proceeded to slice and smear the softened butter over the wax paper: he held onto the side of the cookie sheet with his left hand to keep it steady and spread it all about before him.  
At one point, she had beaten the dough mixture before her into a silky looking ball of light brown dough.  
“These must chill now,” she whispered into his ear.  
“Dammit,” he grunted, lifting himself upright so she could pick up the cookie sheet and take it to the refrigerator; she picked the roll of plastic wrap from the same shelf from where she fetched the wax paper. She sheared off a small sheet for the bowl of dough and, once she had covered that, she placed it into the refrigerator on the shelf over the cookie sheet.  
“You did a wonderful job, though,” she complimented him at the sight of the soft butter spread about the wax paper like shortening. She returned to him to find the head of the spatula beholding a fair amount of the butter. She licked her lips at the sight of it, and then she lifted her gaze at him.  
“It is going to go right to your beautiful belly,” she breathed out.  
“Yours, too,” he retorted, holding out the spatula for her. She was about to take a lick from the spatula when she hesitated.  
“What? What is the matter?” he asked her, noticing the expression of concern upon her face.  
“Whatever you do—do not turn around.”  
Something tugged at the pit of Lars' stomach and he longed to look behind him.  
“Is it bad?” he asked her in a low voice; he shuffled his fingers on the handle of the spatula: the butter clung to the head as if he had stuck it into the freezer. She swallowed and nibbled on her bottom lip, but she never said anything.  
He closed his eyes and sighed through his nose, and then he turned his head to the side, and then he rotated his whole body around. Outside on the sidewalk, on the other side of the glass, stood a large, hulking man whom he only knew from his nightmares and from the account of Marcia, Sonia, Kirk, Kurt, Ashley, and Mia herself. He knew of his name and the fact he was out for Lars' head even if he had not seen him before then.  
“—fock,” he blurted out as Wayne glared at him through the glass.


	123. Chapter 123

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I took a drive today,  
> time to emancipate.  
> I guess it was the beatings made me wise,  
> but I'm not about to give thanks, or apologize.”  
> -“Rearviewmirror”, Pearl Jam

“Oh. Oh my—fock—oh, fock NO!”  
Wayne clasped onto the door handle in hopes of opening it, but Mia had locked it shut when they walked into the bakery. She gripped onto his shoulder as he struggled to open the door. Lars backed up into her and she in turn backed up towards the refrigerator.  
“What do we do?” she demanded in a hushed voice. Lars' bottom lip trembled. He wanted to make a run for it but he also wondered if that enraged bull out there was going to make his way around the side of the bakery and come in that way. Indeed, he read Lars' mind and let go of the handle and, huffing and puffing, ran around the side of the building.  
“Wait. Where's he going?” she asked. He turned his head to see the look of concern upon her face.  
“Side door,” he stammered, struggling to keep his stomach at ease. She gripped onto both of his shoulders and shoved him forward. He felt her let go of his right so she could pick up her purse, but she kept pushing him towards the front door. He opened the door for the two of them with a loud yelp blurted out from his lips; they dashed down to the car and climbed inside without hesitating. Mia fumbled the car keys but she caught them and stuck it into the ignition. The car roared to life and she yanked on the parking brake.  
Lars' hand trembled as he buckled his seat belt; out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Wayne lumbering out of the front door with something in his hand. But Mia stepped on it before he could reach the car. Lars turned his head right as he hurled the thing at the car. It slammed up against the rear passenger window with a loud THWACK, thus leaving a massive spiderweb of a break in the glass all the while.  
“What the hell was that!” she cried as they speared down the street.  
“THE SAUCE PAN!” he shouted, his voice echoing off of the inside of the car. “HE FOCKING THREW THE PAN! He focking threw the FOCKING SAUCE PAN at us!”  
“The sauce pan you used to heat up the butter?!” she yelped.  
“Yes!”  
They screeched around the right hand corner down a side street. Mia slowed down a bit given they headed right into an intersection: Lars clung to his seat belt and the center console as she turned into the left turn lane for the next on ramp onto the freeway.  
“I know where we can go,” she told him, panting. He peered into the side view mirror and she glanced into the rear view mirror between their heads.  
“Shit! Shit! Shit! That's him!” she shrieked. “THAT'S HIM BEHIND US!”  
Lars took another look into the mirror at the shabby car roaring up behind them, but she was quick to make the turn onto the freeway. They sped onto the four lanes, crowded with all manner of cars and large trucks. He braced himself as she kept her eye on the exits.  
“Look for exits to Wilsonville,” she ordered. He kept his eye on each and every sign that passed them on the sides of the road. He knew exactly where they were headed for at that moment. It took him a minute to realize he was holding his breath: he let out a loud sigh through his lips but it did very little to suffice the swelling sensation inside of his chest.  
Lucky for him, she was quicker to spot a sign leading into the neighboring town of Wilsonville and she merged off of the freeway onto the side streets. He took a glimpse into the mirror to see if his car still loomed behind them. And then he felt something grip onto his left hand. He peered down at her squeezing his hand there on the center console. He swallowed as she glanced over at him; he rolled his hand over to better hold hers, and they shot forward down the street towards Sandra's house.  
Lars recognized Jason reclined back on the grass in the front yard underneath the shade of a tree. As they came closer, he spotted a glass of what appeared to be stout in his hand. They screeched up to the curb. She killed the engine and they both climbed out of the car at the same time.  
“Oh, hey guys!” Jason greeted them. “What's up?”  
“Jason!” Lars bellowed, out of breath. “Jason, get in the house! GET IN THE FOCKING HOUSE!”  
“Whoa, wait, what's going on?” He climbed to his feet to meet up with them.  
“No time to explain!” Mia yelled as they both guided him into the house. Lars yanked the front door open and the three of them barreled inside. He kept running towards the back of the house until he reached the guest bedroom, with his long hair flying behind his head all the while. He shoved open the door and let it hang ajar behind him.  
“Sandra!” Mia shouted, her voice breaking. Lars dove behind the side of the bed and tucked himself into the space between it and the wall. Panting, he pulled his knees up to his chest and closed his eyes in hopes to calm down his heart. He heard footsteps running down the hall outside of the room. His chest heaved with the lack of breath. For a second, he literally thought he was going to die.  
“Lars!” Mia shouted out again. “Lars, where'd you go? Where are you?”  
“I'm in here!” he hollered. More footsteps, and then over the top of the bed, he recognized her wavy black hair. She dove down behind the side of the bed before him. He opened his arms and she crawled towards him. He held the back of her head as she snuggled up next to him. He could feel the tears coming on along his eyes.  
“Lars—” she choked out.  
“Mia—” he whispered, his voice breaking.  
“Lars—if we die, I want you to know two things,” she whispered to him.  
“Go on, go on,” he beckoned her, snapping his eyes shut.  
“The first thing is,” she sniffled and gasped; he could feel the tears burning his eyes, “I want you to forgive me and never stop forgiving me for breaking your heart.”  
“I do! I do, darling!” He felt a lump emerge inside of his throat. “Always. Always with every inch of my being.”  
“Know that I only cheated on him because I wanted you for myself—”  
“I do know, honey pie. I do—I do, I do, I do…”  
“I cannot believe I lied to you all this time.”  
“Everyone lies, my darling. From time to time.”  
“I feel so terrible that I let the whole thing get out of hand like this—I feel as though I have committed a crime against, not just you but myself.”  
“Min skat, what we do is not obscene and cheating is not a crime—” He gasped as he moved his head back to stare at her right into the eye. Ellen burst into his mind as he held her face in his hands. “Do you hear me? Cheating is not a crime. But murder sure as holy fucking bloody hell is.”  
“And the other thing is—” She hesitated as she gazed back at him right in the eye.  
“Yes?” he asked her in a voice so soft and light that he may as well have breathed it.  
“—I will always love you.”  
He felt a tear streak down from his eye as he brought her face closer to him so he could give her a kiss, the deepest and hardest one he had given her so far.  
“Oh, darling—hold me,” he wept.  
“Only if you hold me—the love of my life—” She buried her face into his chest and threw her arms around his body. Tears streamed down from his eyes. He bowed his head into the crown of hers: the clean smell of her soft hair was all he needed right then. Her hands slithered underneath his shirt to feel his soft flesh.  
He snapped his eyes shut and pictured his parents back home in the Bay Area followed by his grandparents back home in Denmark. He pictured James, Kirk, and Dave. He pictured Sonia. He pictured them all standing around his casket, the last place he would lay in before he made the trip to see Cliff again. He was going to see Cliff again.  
Voices floated in from down the hall. He held still to hear them over Mia's soft sobbing and his own thundering heartbeat. Sandra said something. Then Jason said something. There was a third voice, that voice of that man, that man who wanted him and Mia dead.  
He closed his eyes as he held her tighter against his body. He felt her hands slide around his waist, around his beautiful soft skin. Her lips pressed against the side of his neck followed by the side of his face: something dripped onto his skin. Her tears.  
Sandra said something, which was then followed by silence. Unsettling silence sank over the house.  
Lars opened his eyes to see Mia looming before his face with her eyes closed and tears running down her cheeks.  
“Mia,” he whispered to her. She opened her eyes to reveal the red riddling her lovely eyes. She kept her face up against his, until she glanced behind her to look at the edge of the bed. They were met with complete silence.  
“What—What happened?” she asked in a soft whisper, returning to him.  
“I—I don't know,” he sputtered. “It just—it just got quiet.”  
“Lars? Mia?” Jason's voice floated in from the hallway.  
“Jason!” Lars called out in a hoarse voice.  
More silence. Then he spotted Jason's long wavy tendrils emerging from behind the top of the bed. Lars rubbed Mia's back and gestured behind them.  
“It's Jason,” he breathed out, and she turned around to take a look at him lifting his glass of stout, which he more than likely never set down, from behind the side of his body.  
“Some crazy bastard showed up to the doorstep,” he told them, lifting the edge of the glass towards his mouth, “but we stopped him. And then Sandra threatened to call the police on him, and then he high tailed it out.”  
“That was my ex-husband,” answered Mia, “and yes. He is crazy. He is batshit.”  
“He wants to kill me,” Lars stated, feeling another tear stream down his cheek.  
“Oh my fucking God. Well, come on—it's okay now.” He gestured for them to crawl out of their hiding place: Mia stood to her feet first with the help of Jason's free hand. Meanwhile, Lars stretched out his legs and rolled onto his hip so as to lift himself up that way. He wiped away tears with the fleshy part of his thumb. Sandra emerged in the doorway. Mia gasped as she started crying again.  
“Thank you—thank you a million, Sandra and Jason,” she breathed out.  
“I'm not gonna let him hurt you two,” Sandra assured them, wiping away a tear. “Not on my watch. Not on my turf.”  
“Yeah, me, neither,” he added; Lars pictured the same scenario but with Dave there next to Jason.  
“I'll get you both a drink of water,” said Sandra, and then she disappeared into the hall. Jason fetched up a sigh as he took a sip of his stout. Lars took a seat on the edge of the bed: he leaned back on his elbows to relax his body and catch his breath. Mia plopped down next to him.  
“I really hope he didn't do anything to the bakery,” she fretted.  
“I hope he didn't either,” he added.  
“He got into the bakery?” Jason asked, horrified.  
“Yeah,” replied Mia, “I locked the front door and he saw us in there and he tried to get in. He got in through the side door instead.”  
“And as we were pulling away, he hurled a metal sauce pan at the window,” Lars continued.  
“So that's what that is.”  
“That's another thing he broke now,” Mia grumbled, folding her arms over her chest. Lars' chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath and ease the nauseated feeling inside of his stomach. “He broke Marcia and Sonia's doorknob, too. That's something I going to have to fixed in the future.”  
“What I wanna know is why the hell did he come after you guys?” asked Jason.  
“Probably because of his mom,” Mia pointed out, “she came over to the house last night, totally hammered—I mean, she was loaded. Blithering nonsense and then she fell asleep. They found her in the river this morning and the cops on the news report ruled it a suicide.”  
She peered back at Lars.  
“Shit, the house!”  
“Hang on, Ashley locked the door!” he recalled. “I really hope he's not there, though.”  
“He won't go back there,” Mia assured him.  
“He won't?”  
“No.”  
“How do you know?”  
“He just won't. Lars, I was married to him. I know what he's like. He'll make promises but he can't keep them. That's just what he's like. He played me like that.”  
Sandra emerged from the hall again, this time with a glass of water in each hand. Lars leaned forward so they both took the glasses at the same time. Sandra and Jason watched them both drink down the cool crisp water.  
“Why don't you guys stay here for a bit?” she suggested. “I was about to make lunch after all.”  
“I'd love to have lunch,” Mia replied.  
“Yeah, me, too,” Lars answered, “I also need something to settle my stomach.” He lay a hand upon his belly as Sandra rubbed her hands together and she coaxed Jason to follow her back out to the hallway. Lars and Mia were left alone in the guest bedroom with their glasses of water and thundering heartbeats. He held the glass to his stomach with his right hand and reclined on his left; she on the other hand, clasped onto the glass by the base. As the adrenaline and the tears wore off, he began to think clear again.  
“You know, darling,” he began, “and I am trying to get my head around this, but you know how you feigned your death?”  
“Of course.”  
“Do you think—do you think maybe, just maybe, he believes you and him are still married?”  
“He might,” she confessed. “But as far as I know the two of us are a done deal. I promise. I promise.” She reached in between them to touch his hand. He sighed as a slight pain welled up in the front of his head. He hoped whatever Sandra had for them would put him at ease as much as her hand there


	124. Chapter 124

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Whoever thought you'd be better  
> at turning a screw than me:  
> I do it for my life.  
> Made my drive shaft crank,  
> made my pistons bulge,  
> made my ball bearing melt from the heat.”  
> -”Mechanix”, Megadeth

Sandra soon returned to the room with a plate in each hand, and they both observed the sandwiches she had given them: roasted pastrami with fresh lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, sliced Muenster cheese, and smears of mayonnaise and brown mustard spread over toasted wheat bread. Mia pushed herself back against the headboard of the bed, but Lars stayed in place there on the edge as he leaned back on one hand and ate his sandwich with the other.  
His teeth sank into the toasted bread and he knew she watched him, and thus he ate at a slow pace, biding his time with each and every bite, every bite of that fresh sliced pastrami with cracked black pepper accompanied with the lettuce. At one point, he closed his eyes and savored the bite of sandwich; hesitating there right before her, he was about to swallow when he felt her lips press against the side of his neck.  
He swallowed the bite and turned to her with a quaint little smile upon his face.  
“Our love may not be perfect, darling,” he started, “but it is more than what I could ever ask for.”  
“As long as your tummy and every inch of your body is at ease, I am more than happy, baby,” she told him, giving him another kiss. He finished the sandwich in one large bite, and then followed it up with a wiping of his hands and an offering to take her empty plate into the kitchen. Lars strode out of the room and into the hallway when he overheard Jason talking about returning to New Orleans soon enough. He could not hear all of it as he made his way into the kitchen but he had heard enough of it to know what was happening.  
“Oh, Lars!” Sandra caught him before he returned down the hall. “When you get the chance, tell Mia the bakery's fine. The cops checked it out and there is nothing wrong with the bakery.”  
“Will they be around, though?” he asked her.  
“Of course. After what happened today, I'm not taking any more chances.”  
He nodded, and continued on down the hall, and back into the guest room. He closed the door most of the way to give the two of them privacy. He sank down on the edge of the bed, and rolled onto his hip to look back at her.  
“So Jason says we are going to go back to the South in about a couple of days,” he started. She fluttered her eyelashes at him in surprise.  
“A couple of days?” she repeated. “You and I probably don't have a couple of days. What if he comes back between now and then?”  
“True.”  
“And that stint of the tour lasts how long?”  
“About a month…” He fell silent for a moment in thought.  
“You could always run off to Seattle and lay low with Olivia,” he suggested. “Or Mikayla. You know, at least until I come back for your little baking thing.”  
“I have to work, though,” she pointed out. “And even though Sandra's ready to open a new Smell the Magic up in Seattle, I don't know if it's me or Marcia going up there as of yet. And speaking of which, I hope he didn't do something horrible to the bakery, either.”  
“Sandra told me to tell you that the police showed up there and checked everything out. Pretty much the worst thing he did was—throw that sauce pan at us and broke the car window. There is still that danger, however, and so they're going to hang around the place.”  
“Well, of course, but,” she swallowed, and Lars moved his hand over the top of the bed spread to touch her thigh, “my worry is that—even though I know for a fact he's not going back to the house—he could find us and track us down. If he was able to do all of that research with the copy of Ashley's manuscript and everything, he could find us. And I don't know what else to do other than lay low for a while. You and I are in this together.”  
He sighed through his nose, unsure of what to think or say to her. There was the possibility of asking her to take time off to come with him to New Orleans, but there was only so much time she could take for herself on a vacation. He rolled back over so he could recline back on his elbows: he stared down at the thighs of his jeans and thought about Dave, if he was there with Jason to help protect the two of them. He had done it already with Angela back at the Bennetts' house.  
Lars perked up at the thought of Dave.  
“Mia,” he started, clearing his throat, “let's go back to the house.”  
“Now?”  
“Yes.” He pushed himself into an upright position and turned his head to face her. “I have an idea.”  
He stood to his feet before she could object or give a sense of reluctance, and headed back out to the hallway. He waved at Jason and Sandra as he continued onward to the front door.  
“I'll see you soon, Jason,” he told him as he walked at a brisk pace out the door and into the afternoon sun. Mia followed him out to the car, fumbling with the keys with each and every step across the grass. She rounded the front of the car and unlocked the driver's side door; meanwhile, Lars eyed the massive target shaped crack in the window, far too big for something like a pair of pants to rectify and seal off. He pictured it splitting apart while they drove down the road as he climbed into the front seat next to her.  
They drove back to the blue and white house, and before she even so much as killed the engine there in the driveway, Lars climbed out and rounded the rear bumper and hurried up to the front door. He threw a hand on the doorknob when he realized the door was locked.  
He almost broke into a slight dance there on the doorstep as Mia parked the car and climbed out with her purse held up to her hip. She stuck the key into the lock and opened the door. Lars shot into the house before she was able to even take the key out of the dead bolt. Never minding the faint smell of liquor left behind from Jen, he knelt before his overnight bag there on the floor and searched through his clothes.  
“May I ask what you're looking for?” she asked him as she hung her purse on the hook next to the door.  
“Let's see—” He poked through her letters to him until he spotted one of his pairs of jeans and fondled the pockets. He felt a lump on the inside and reached in for the pocket knife Dave had given him.  
“Mia, I want you to use this for the week I am gone,” he told her, climbing to his feet. He handed her the knife and she stared at it with a befuddled look upon her face.  
“Lars, I can't take your knife!”  
“No, no, I want you to borrow it. If he comes at you again, use it. Get him right where it hurts. Throw it like a ninja star if you must, and—” He stopped and peered about the foyer.  
“—hang on, hang on—the manuscript.”  
She gasped and brought her hands to her face. He felt his heart skip several beats.  
“Shit—shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—wait.” He stopped again and delved through his memory.  
“It's under the car seat,” he told her, and with that, she doubled back and darted outside to the car. Lars turned to face the kitchen and he spotted something on the front of the refrigerator door. Taking a glance out the door first, he strode into the kitchen to better examine the note for himself. He stooped forward to read the neat penmanship:

“Don't let Wayne get his hands back on that thing. Take it where you can burn it.  
Ash”

He knitted his eyebrows together as he picked it off of the door. Mia stepped through the open door again with the manuscript tucked under her arm and a puzzled look about her face.  
“What's that?”  
“A note from Ashley. She wants us to burn that.” He gestured to the manuscript under her arm.  
“Burn—this.”  
“Yeah.”  
He pursed his lips together and raised an eyebrow.  
“There's something fishy here, Mia. I am not sure what to think of it, either.”  
She closed the front door before she ambled towards him and slid the manuscript down on the counter next to the stove. He felt her put her arms around his waist, followed by her lips against the side of his neck.  
“You just had lunch,” she told him.  
“Indeed I did,” he replied, feeling a smirk cross his face. “And we made out last night, but I wound up falling asleep.”  
He set the pocket knife down on the table before he turned around to face her; all the while she kept her arms wrapped around his waist. He clasped his hands to either side of her face and brought his lips closer to her mouth, but he never kissed her. Instead, he gazed into her eyes and caressed her soft skin.  
“What say you and I have a round here in the kitchen?” he suggested, his smirk enlarging into an impish grin. She opened her mouth to shove her tongue in between his teeth: her hands rode up his back, and she lifted her knee up to his hip. His fingers entwined through the wavy strands of her dark hair as he dropped his lips to the patch of skin underneath her chin. He kissed her neck once, twice, three times as she gasped and let out a quiet moan. Her hands slid back down his back and onto his hips: he felt her reach under his shirt to feel his skin. She gave his butt a slight pinch and it took him a second to realize she was trying to take off his pants.  
He lifted his head to do it himself. Meanwhile, she stripped off her pants, and then held onto the bottom of her shirt to peel it off and show him a soft fitted black bra.  
“Oh, my God, that bra is hot—touch me, touch me, touch me…”  
She pressed her hands to his stomach, not that full but full enough to feel soft on the inside. Her lips returned to his, and he could feel the heat from inside of the crotch of her panties. He stuck his hand in between her legs and gyrated the pads of his fingers about; she groaned inside of her throat at the feeling.  
He felt her grab his crotch with her thumb right on top of his head. His toes curled and his knee buckled. He almost lost his balance but she caught him before he could fall back onto the wall, or the floor. Her fingers caressed about his hips and his love handles; he reached behind her back to unhook her bra. The straps slid down her shoulders, and once she had exposed her breasts to him, he stuck his face into her chest for a series of gentle kisses.  
“Yes, baby—yes,” she gasped, “yes—si, si, si—mmm—” She shuddered as his lips brushed against her nipple and then down the curvature of her belly.  
He opened his mouth over the band of her underwear and held on with his four front teeth. He used his teeth to yank it down her lower belly and her hips, all the way down to her knees; once he reached her knees, he let the panties fall to her ankles. He gazed up at her bare crotch and the strip of light pink before her clit. He licked his lips but he knew she wasn't ready yet.  
Lars lifted himself up, gliding the tips of his fingers along her knees and her thighs. He eyed her belly button and that underlying gentle curve, that sexy soft curve he wanted to touch and never stop touching. She did it to him all those times: now the ball made its way into his court. This would be the final time for a month he would have his chance, and thus he decided to make the most of it. He pressed his lips to her belly and followed it up with the tip of his tongue. He kissed her again, followed by another lick; then he pursed his lips and suckled on the skin.  
Careful not to hurt her beautiful skin, he gritted his teeth and ever so gently ground the edges against that same exact spot.  
Her hands clasped onto the back of his head as he nibbled and suckled and licked the spot on her skin, over and over again.  
“Baby—” she breathed out, “—baby—papa—papi—papacito—oh mios Dio—mmm—”  
She began to breathe heavy and he knew she was on her merry way to coming for him. He finished the bite with gentle kiss after gentle kiss, and then he dropped down before her knees, which she had spread for him, so as to use his fingers. Once again careful not to hurt her, he stroked the blossom of light pink tissue in between her legs with the very tips of his fingers. She slammed her hands against the wall behind him and gasped.  
“Oh my God—mios Dio—mios Dio—mios Dio!”  
He took that opportunity to kiss her in between her thighs.  
“Ohhhhh, fuck that feels so good!” she cried out.  
“Fuck, I have been wanting to do that!” he declared, kissing her again.  
“Lay down on your back—I will do it for you, too!” she told him: he kissed her twice more before rolling onto the floor like a dog asking for a belly rub. He spread his legs and she dropped down over his face: wavy strands of black hair dangled over his face.  
“Please stay safe, my love,” he whispered. “Take that knife—please.”  
“I will take it if you promise to burn the manuscript,” she whispered.  
“Of course, of course—kiss me—” She kissed him on the lips and then on the side of the neck. “—and don't stop kissing me, please. Please.”  
He opened his thighs some more for her and she scrambled to his hips. He thought about her kissing his thighs after the time he ate the whole red velvet cake; he thrust his hips as she returned the favor for him right between his thighs.  
“Please, darling—behage, min skat—behage! AH!”  
He felt her reach into the front of his underwear for his length. She poked and groped at him until his eyes rolled up into his head.  
“Dominant me—” he begged. “Please. I am yours. I am yours for the taking!”  
The pad of her thumb stroked his shaft and his head; his body shuddered and shook, and he took in a large gulp of air before letting out a loud pleasured wail. He opened his eyes to see her over his face once more; meanwhile, she kept her hand still down his pants.  
“I am yours, too, papacito rico,” she whispered into his face. She moved her thumb again to bring out a squeak from the inside of his throat. He felt her let go of him and take out her hand, but there was something else: he felt her hands pull down the waist band. She climbed over his hips and took a seat on his thighs. Her hips gyrated to and fro as if she was churning butter.  
He stared into her eyes, never wavering with each and every grind.  
“Oh—Oh my fuck—oh my fock—”  
“Yeah, this is hot isn't it?” she asked him, breathless. He noticed beads of sweat forming on her bare chest.  
“I'm—I'm—I'm—” he gasped, feeling as though his chest was about to explode. He swallowed. “I'm gonna come—I'm gonna come—I! AM! GOING! TO! COME!”  
She lifted her hips right as he shot out a good sized load onto the floor between his legs.  
“Clean up on aisle three,” he joked, his voice breaking. She burst out laughing as she lay down on the floor next to him, panting. She stroked his heaving chest as he closed his eyes.  
“Wow,” was all he could say. “Fucking hell, you and I both needed that.”  
“Feel better?” she asked him.  
“So much. And you?” He glanced over at her.  
“Ah, never finer, baby boy.” She kissed the side of his neck, and Lars was eager to make another return after the month.


	125. Chapter 125

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “This was all you, none of it me.  
> You put your hands on, on my body and told me,  
> you told me you were ready  
> for the big one, for the big jump.  
> I'd be your last love everlasting you and me.”  
> -”Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”, Adele

Lars had arrived in New Orleans a few days after his encounter with Mia with the copy of Ashley's manuscript tucked underneath his arm. After promptly checking into his hotel room and setting down his belongings, he walked about the partially eroded sidewalks of the French Quarter in search of some place to eat, and also a place to set down the manuscript and walk away from the flames.  
He wore nothing but a black button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and little black shorts: black in spite of the overhanging swampy humidity and the incoming heat despite the gentle breeze emerging from the Gulf. The sky overhead was more blue than he could ever imagine, blue with a few striated lines of puffy gray clouds dotted here and there left behind in the wake of the hurricanes.  
His hair billowed behind his head in the direction of the winds; he gazed up at the sun from behind his mirrored sunglasses for a moment before he crossed the street towards a long line of shops and diners; and then he spotted a restaurant with bright blue wooden outside walls and a matching blue awning lined with white fancy trimming. The front window beheld fancy gold and scarlet lettering reading “Bar and Cafe.”  
The rays of the sun streamed against the bare skin of his legs as he strode along the sidewalk and then gripped onto the door handle. He peeked inside to find people packed inside of the place like a can of sardines. He backed out to the humidity and lingered underneath the shade of the awning, next to a woman leaning forward in a shabby wooden chair and smoking a cigarette. He turned his head to see the burning cigarette on her other side, next to her head. The very sight of the thing in her left hand made his stomach turn but lucky for him, the breeze shifted and the smoke blew in the opposite direction. He sneered and returned to the door; a part of him wanted to go back in there because it was cooler and he could perhaps breathe better.  
“Gonna be a while,” said the woman in a terse tone of voice as she took another puff. Lars stopped: he recognized her voice. He turned around to look at the woman, who blew out a cloud of gray smoke before turning her head back at him. She blinked several times at him.  
“Hey, I know you,” she lowered her voice to a sinister whisper.  
“I know you, too,” he retorted, the memory of her bursting into Sonia's bedroom with a hatchet in her hand. Angela sneered at him as she held the cigarette next to her head: Lars spotted her wedding ring on her ring finger, a small golden band topped with a large snowy white polished stone surrounded by smaller golden stones. It looked cheap, as if Ben had bought it for her on a budget. He shifted his weight as he tried to keep the copy of the manuscript out of her sight without actually putting it out of her sight.  
“Whatcha got there?” She eyed the stack of papers under his arm and maintained her sneer at him.  
“None of your business,” he snapped. “And I mean that, too—I am the one who makes business decisions, and thus they are kept confidential.”  
She chuckled at him as she turned her head the other way for another puff. She blew out the smoke into the street before returning to him.  
“I like the way you say 'confidential',” she told him, keeping her tone curt, “what are you, German? Funny 'cause I like Germans.”  
His bottom lip trembled as he struggled to swallow down his fear. His toes curled inside of his shoes at her presence. He wondered if she had another hatchet or the same one with her in her hotel room, or something else, something worse. He cleared his throat as if he had something in his throat.  
“Will you put that cigarette out?” he blurted out. She glanced back at him with a sneer and then chuckled.  
“Why?” she demanded, disgusted with him. “I'm facing the other way, you know. And the breeze is going in the other direction.”  
“Yes, it's just—”  
“What?”  
He licked his lips: how he wanted a drink right then. He did not finish his thought because she glared back at him. She shook her head at him.  
“Pssh, Wayne should'a known it wasn't you he was beating on,” she grumbled, taking another inhale of noxious smoke. She rounded her lips in an attempt to make a ring but only blew a steady stream of smoke instead. Lars watched it billow around the left side of her head before evanescing into nothing. “That other guy he beat up, Chad, didn't have bangs and wasn't—” She turned back to gesture at his black clothes. “—dressed like it was fucking Halloween. And he didn't have a big fat belly on him, either.”  
She returned to face back in the forward direction for one more puff of smoke before dropping the butt on the ground and smashing it with the sole of her shoe; he pressed his free hand to his belly, still a bit plump and round but not as big as she made out of it.  
“His idiot, waste of flesh of a father apparently couldn't tell the difference between skinny and fat,” she continued. “If it was me who was there, I would've known the difference and kicked you right off of that property.”  
Right at that moment, Lars had an epiphany, and he longed to tell Mia but as far as he could see, there were no pay phones. But then again, he tilted his head to the side to better examine the side of her face.  
“Hang on,” he started in a gentle voice, “why are you telling me this?”  
“I failed,” she confessed.  
“You failed?” He knitted his eyebrows together.  
“Failed. Big time.”  
“At what?”  
“Trying to get Mia.” She licked her lips before she turned back to him.  
“May I ask for what?”  
“Man, you sure ask a lot of questions.”  
“That's just how I am. I'm a curious fellow.”  
She sighed through her nose before sitting upright in the chair: she reeked of cigarettes, but the breeze continued to blow in the opposite direction so Lars would not have to deal with it.  
“Okay. Wayne and I had an affair shortly after he and Mia got married. And I dunno when you showed up, but it was before you entered the picture. I was still in a mere relationship with Ben, too, so I was doing the whole 'other woman' thing on two different levels. After you entered the picture, he called me one night and told me he wondered if Mia was cheating on him, and so I suggested squeezing answers out of her. Since she wasn't talking, I then went and did the stupidest thing.”  
“What was that?”  
“Well, since I live on Bainbridge Island—you know, within range of Seattle—I did some snooping because he told me one of her best friends was based up there. Although to be fair, it was his idea for me to do the snooping given the convenience. It was stupid of me to listen to him, though, because I saw her hanging out with a few other men, including you and Chad. But I wasn't sure about you and Chad because you both look kind of the same. I only went back and told him about it, and then he just went from there with it because he used to be a journalist.”  
“Wait, you saw me and her with a few other guys?”  
Lars racked his memory for the times he and Mia traveled to Seattle together, including the first time. They were with Nirvana before they even considered themselves Nirvana.  
“Hang on, was it night time?” he asked her. Angela paused, staring down at the ground with a hard look upon her face.  
“It was,” she answered in a soft voice. “Yes, it was night. That was why I couldn't tell you and Chad apart.” She fetched up a sigh and shuffled her feet about the top of the sidewalk. “And then I got desperate because I knew I—fucked everything up. After Thanksgiving, I slept with Chris to try and get answers out of him because I saw him and his band hanging out with you guys, and that got me nowhere. I tried it with Kim and Hiro: nothin'. I overheard Matt say he wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole.”  
She shook her head as he turned around so as to face her and keep the manuscript out of her sight.  
“And to be honest, I feel—I feel bad about it,” she confessed. “I feel terrible that I sicked him onto a guy I know through my current husband all because I was worried of what he would do to me if I said 'no.'”  
Angela turned her head again to look at Lars once more, and then she knitted her eyebrows at the papers tucked underneath his arm.  
“Wait a minute,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “That's the manuscript. The hard copy of Ashley Starr's interview with Kurt Cobain and Tracy.”  
He swallowed and shifted his weight, unsure of what to say to her.  
“What the hell are you doing with that?”  
He cleared his throat.  
“Well—first of all,” he began, holding it out in front of his body, “it is a copy of it.”  
“A copy,” she reiterated, “he told me you've gotta have the right paperwork to get a copy of any press release. Either you fucked your way in or that's his copy.”  
He ran the tip of his tongue along the top of his bottom lip.  
“The latter,” he said in a low voice.  
“So that was you,” she stated, leaning back against the left arm of the chair, “he called me the other night saying someone broke into his parents' house and when he went to see if things were missing, he couldn't find that anywhere.”  
“Ashley told me to burn this,” he told her.  
“Burn it!” she declared, shocked. “Why the hell does she want you to burn it?”  
“No idea,” he admitted. They both fell into silence for a moment and then her eyes widened at the sight of it in front of him.  
“I know why,” she told him, snatching it out of his hands. She stood to her feet and strode into the middle of the pavement. Making sure the coast was clear, she stooped down to pick up a stray rock to hold the papers down by the top right corner. She reached into her pocket for something and took out a silvery cigarette lighter. She flicked it on and held the open flame next to the edges of the papers. Once they ignited, she stood to her feet and doused the flame in one fell swoop. She doubled back to Lars, who watched the manuscript burn up right there in the middle of the street.  
“You know why?” he asked her once she returned within earshot of him.  
“You know why Wayne got fired from his journalism job, right?” she asked him in a low voice, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her shorts. She loomed closer to his face and the smell of cigarettes made his eyes water and his nose burn.  
“No…” He was somewhat relieved to be wearing those mirrored sunglasses because she could not see his eyes darting back and forth in hopes of seeing passersby.  
“He said things to Olivia—Ashley's mother—and also to Xana—Andy Wood's girlfriend. Things along the lines of 'I want to fuck you in the back hall of the office where I work at until I make you cry' and 'let me give you dildos and vibrators for your birthday so we can fuck better.' I know those because those were the exact same things he said to me when we were fucking on his and Mia's old bed.”  
He shuddered at the thought of her and Wayne on that old lumpy mattress, that same mattress he and Mia did it a few times before. No wonder why it was so uncomfortable!  
A couple stepped out of the restaurant and Lars and Angela were met with a blast of cool air. He lunged to the side to catch the door but she clutched onto his shirt collar.  
“Where do you think you're going?” she demanded.  
“Where it's—cool? It's hot out here.”  
“Indeed it is.” She lowered her voice to a husky, but gravelly tone.  
“Angela, you're married,” he pointed out.  
“I'm aware of that. You also slept with a married woman and then that skank who slept with my husband.”  
“Is that why you went after me and Sonia with an ax?” he demanded, swallowing.  
“Oh, that. As a matter of fact, yes. Yes it is. That's precisely why I went after her. Ben was late coming home one morning and I found out he was getting love letters from Mia, and then I broke into his little lock box and found all of those letters. I knew who she was, too, from seeing her with the Soundgarden guys over Thanksgiving, and with Layne and Jerry.”  
He felt his back press against the wall next to the door: he noticed behind her at the smolders of the manuscript drifting along the pavement with the breeze.  
“Come here, big boy—” she growled into his face. “I haven't slept with a man in what feels like so long. Feel a man next to me… Ben's been working over time with his carpentry and Wayne—forget it. After I found out what he and his dad did to Mia in Pike Place Market, I told him to piss off. Like I was willing to get dirt on her because I have principles. But now—now I've got a German man with me. A little German man with long luscious hair and a soft, warm body.”  
“By the way—I am Danish, which is close but no cigar.”  
“Danish. Even better. In fact, that explains why you're so sexy—”  
He winced at the foul odor of cigarettes on her breath and then he turned his head at the door opening again.  
“What say you and I go inside?” he suggested. “It's bloody hot out here and I am focking thirsty.”  
“Gladly,” she flashed him a wink and letting go of his shirt collar. He led her into the restaurant, where they were met with a wall of chatter and a blast of cool air from the vents overhead. Lars ducked around several people and the left side of the room until he spotted the bar on the side of the room before him. He gestured for Angela to have a seat next to him there at the bar. He asked for akvavit if they had it while she ordered a hurricane.  
“Goodness,” he remarked with a slight grimace.  
“We don't have akvavit, sorry,” said the bartender.  
“Aw. Oh, well—er, give me a nice mint Julep, please.”  
All the while, Angela kept wanting to touch his arms and his shoulders but he brushed her off. This was the same woman who came after him with a hatchet, out for his and Sonia's blood. At one point, she set her hand on his thigh and he jerked his knee back to escape her touch.  
“Oh, just give it up already,” she whispered to him, and she took a sip of her drink. Meanwhile, Lars asked for hush puppies and Cajun meatballs to tithe him over until dinner time. She continued to try to touch him while downing a few more hurricanes; all the while, he ate his up food and relished in the lovely minty drink in his hand. He longed for Mia to be there with him so he could make more of his dirty jokes there in the restaurant crowded with people and conversation.  
At some point, he noticed Angela's speech slurring. He picked up one of the hush puppies before he turned to her and the partial glass of hurricane in her hand, and he wondered how many this made now. He faced the bartender, who wiped down a glass with a clean towel.  
“Excuse me—is there a taxi service here?” he asked him.  
“Oh, yeah! Of course.”  
“I think she has had a few too many,” he gestured to Angela, who struggled to keep her eyes open, or her head up from the edge of the bar.  
“Oh, thank you, man. Come on, hon—”  
As the bartender gestured for her to stand up, Lars returned to his food and his mint Julep. Once she was out of earshot, he sighed through his nose.  
“Poor bitch is a bigger fucking mess than I am,” he muttered to himself as he took a bite of meatball.


	126. Chapter 126

“Note to self: never let Kirk put hot sauce on several hush puppies and have him force them onto you ever again, even if you are begging for it and it is the final piece of food left in your hotel room and he looks at you with those big sad eyes. God—my tummy hurts.”

“I looked down at my dick just now and I realized I was looking at it without having to push in my gut or suck in. This is not a drill. I need that weight back.”

“One of these days, I am going to wonder why the hell I have not bothered to grow a beard again. There is just something so—masculine and rugged about having all of that facial hair about my face, and then having it tickle the lips of Mia's vag when I eat her out like an ice cream cone. But then again, it is quite itchy for me. Eh, if she finds it sexy, then I shall do it while I am out and about in the Deep South.”

“I have a confession to make, Elske. And I am trusting you on this, and if somebody finds out about this very thought that I am about to tell, please forgive me ahead of time as I will… track down Angela and have her torch you.  
“Okay.  
“I kind of wish I had said yes to Angela while we were in the restaurant in New Orleans. Yes to having sex with her. She was obviously desperate and I kind of wish I did just to stick it to Doorknob—YES, I AM CALLING HIM DOORKNOB FOREVER—and just to even out this whole pentagon between him, her, Sonia, Ben, and myself, but I have already made up with Mia, so I would not feel right if I did it. She also smelled like a stale old ashtray and no amount of hurricanes or mint juleps are going to smooth over that godawful smell.  
“But God, she just—I feel bad for her. She was lonely there on the porch and she put her hands on me and gave me her lighter… makes me wonder what she was doing in New Orleans, too.  
"And you know, now that I think about it, the fact she was able to go after me and Sonia with an ax in defense of Ben tells me of her dedication and devotion to him. She is a devout person. She is loyal, and she had the ovaries to go out of her way to spy on us all because the other alternative was getting her ass handed to her in... whatever way he had threatened her with. I am positive Mia would do the same thing for me, except I'm not a vicious douche canal who throws sauce pans at people's car windows.  
“I kind of wish I accepted her better. She wanted me, just as a relief. But fuck, my stomach is killing me, though. Hurting too much and too bad for me to really ruminate on anything at the moment.”

“Look at me: a tea boy drinking coffee accompanied with a chocolate scone. It is the end of times.”

“I had a dream last night that Ellen visited me. She was standing in the doorway of my hotel room and she beckoned me out into the hallway. She took off my clothes and slapped my belly like she was playing with gelatin. No explanation or context: just jiggling my belly. And I looked down and sure enough, I had a big bowl of jello for a belly. She wouldn't stop rubbing me or playing with me, either…  
“Ehhh, it's not as weird as the time I had a dream about sleeping on a marshmallow and when I woke up, Kirk's pillow was missing. He was three doors down from me that day.  
“Or the time I had a dream about Dave and my dad both breaking a chair. No context: they both just broke a chair at the same time.”

“Once this part of the tour is finished, I am going to fly right back to San Francisco. I just feel a need to see my mom and dad again before I go to Mia's baking show there. I also just want to be in my house and sleep in my own bed again. The other bright side of that is I can call up Mia and we can have a round of talking filth. If I can't give her my finger or my tongue in her hole, I shall let her feel my tongue worming its way right into her other hole.”

“Still hungry, so I went back for a second scone downstairs. I also took a shit ton of sliced fruit. The edge is off but my stomach is still aching me. God… I am so hungry.”

“I need a drink. I do not care if it is still early, too.”

“A part of me wants to smoke that pot Layne let Dave, Chris, Jerry, and me smoke at Mia's baking show but I imagine all of the buildings here in Baton Rouge resembling strawberries again and I am not sure if my poor stomach can stomach more cactus. Now mushrooms, I can probably take because I hear they only make things seem more vivid than weird like. Oh, hey, there's Mark. Mark, who gave Ben and the four of us all a ride out from the hurricane.”

“Mark told me he is just keeping an eye out for me. Never elaborated but I wonder…”

“A part of me wants to take off my clothes and do what Ellen did, but I am sitting in a bar now so I am not sure how people would react to that.”

“Damn cactus.”

“Oh, wait, there is Angela! Alright, now for the big question, what the fuck is she doing here?”

“If that son of a bitch wants a piece of me, he is going to have to do better than that. Besides, I am on tour right now. I am not—I repeat, NOT—going to fuck with him. It's not that I am afraid of him: it's just he needs to measure the length his dick better than that.”

“Why, yes, darling. I want to apologize for being blunt yesterday. What say you and I bury the hatchet—for lack of a better word—between us and split a hurricane. And yes, I am aware that I am a man offering to share a girly drink with you.”

“I ate way too many hush puppies just now, fuuuuck. Delicious and a big soul kiss of Louisiana right down my gullet but—fuuuuck.”

“Yes, I have had enough. And I would say you have had enough for yourself, too. You drank more than I did, after all.”

“Yes.  
“No?  
“Hmmm.  
“Okay. On my back, you said?  
“Just—wait, what are you doing?”

“Oh.  
“OH.  
“ANGELA.”

“…Ashley and Kurt are now together…”

“AH!”

“Alright… so now we are all even. All of this can be put to bed and I can finish out this part of the tour and go back home for a bit before I am with Mia every step of the way for her little baking thingy.  
“Yes, I vow not to tell anyone about this. Not even my girlfriend. Just so long as you pleeeease do not tell your husband.”

“Yecchhh—I need another drink. And not one with booze this time.  
“Wow, that sentiment is so unlike me.”

“I need more food, too. I need my pot back. I need to bring back my belly with me. I am still a growing boy after all.  
“I also need to eat to keep my ass going for tonight. Last night in New Orleans was a bit rough on my trommer's body.”

“YES, TACOS. TACOS ARE GOOD, YES.”

“Oh, baby. Do not mind if I eat all nine of these. No hot sauce, please.”

“Wait a minute, Olivia did what? She did what?  
“How did you find out that one?  
“Ben told you. Well—fucking hell, I am glad we were able to do that there outside of the hotel otherwise God help me. It is almost as if she knew. She found out the truth on what what happened with Jen and she knew what the two of us were doing.  
“Kirk, Sonia, and Marcia know, too?! Ugh.”

“Where is the napkin? The stack of napkins? Oh, thank you, darling.”

“Oh, no, I cannot take the rest of your tacos. Besides, you barely touched your first two.”

“I don't know… I can eat a lot but I am not sure about that. I also wonder how much his fat ass can eat, too. I also imagine a blueberry flying up my nose.”

“Let's see, I had two scones, a bunch of hush puppies, and I am working on my sixth taco right now. That in and of itself is a lot of food. My question, though, is what would be the catch?  
“There is no catch?  
“Oh, I see, there is. You just have not thought of one as of yet. Okay.”

“Darling, I will never see you as a slut. So what if you wedged yourself in between Mia and her husband, and slept with Ben and Soundgarden, and then gave me a beej in the alleyway? Besides the way you were rubbing my butt got me pretty hot and bothered. I will have to tell that Mia when I get the chance.”

“Why—I believe I do have a little room left for this last one. This is quite a lot of food, though, oof.”

“You know what? If that bastard wants to challenge my ass to an eating contest, I say bring it on. Bastard.”

“Hello, Mia? Hi, darling. I want to tell you that when your little baking show goes down in the Bay Area, there will be an eating contest between myself and your ex husband and it will consist of a red velvet cake and a blueberry pie. I know for a fact I can take down the cake, but the pie I am wary about because when I ate that cake one time, I was full beyond reason. But then again, I had not stretched out my stomach that far then.  
So do not fret because I assure you that it is alright, though. I am training myself: starting today, I was eating every hour up until the show it seemed. I am eating a couple of chocolate bars right now and I feel fantastic, and I was thinking about it this morning, too: I really want to bring back my belly. You know—the belly I worked so hard to expand and fatten up out of love for all of your food. And also, you know: even with a slight curve over my waist, I still look pretty slim and so it is quite the hot look for me.  
I miss your hands already. All of the sweet delicate touches on my skin. All of your holding me.  
But anyways, before I forget, I should tell you this, and you are going to have to forgive me for this, too, because I did not in any way, shape, or form agree to this condition. I mean it, too, it was not my call to make this. But… fuck it.  
The catch is that if I win, that is, I eat every bite, I take you and he kisses both of our asses; but if I lose—I lose you in the process. He takes you back and there is nothing that I can do about it. I am left with nothing, nothing more than my own fantasies and my own hand. So I hope that my stomach does not fail me. The both of us, I should say rather.”


	127. Chapter 127

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “My eyes have seen you...  
> eyes have seen you.  
> Let them photograph your soul,  
> memorize your alleys on an  
> endless roll.”  
> -”My Eyes Have Seen You”, The Doors

Lars took out the cassette from the recorder and searched around for a pen in his overnight bag.  
Over the course of the tour, he had compiled the mix tape for Mia at every whim and every opportunity he found: songs he overheard on any given radio or from James, Jason, and Kirk's libraries. Every time he heard “Add It Up” from the Violent Femmes, he always thought of her and all of the times he had made love with her. All he wanted was to make love to her right then and there, given he had no idea if he was going to win the contest or not. At one point during the flight, he looked down at the roll on his waist, now coming back into its full form from before their break up. He had been eating all the time over the past month: the waist band on all of his jeans felt tighter now, and not from the thought of Mia posing before him naked or the prospect of another encounter with either Sonia or Angela.  
He spotted the pencil at the bottom of the bag, the one he used to write in his journal, but he knew that would not suffice to write on the side. He needed an actual pen, thus he continued to delve inside, underneath his clothes, his black boots, and his dirty socks.  
“God, I need to do laundry,” he murmured under his breath; it had been a long month given he always returned to his room alone. He felt something on the bottom of his overnight bag, something underneath his other pair of pants. He took it out, revealing it to be a black ink pen.  
“It will do,” he said aloud, unscrewing the cap. He lay the tape flat on the table in front of him and wrote “Lars and Mia's Infinite Playlist” on the strip of paper right smack in the middle of the cassette. He examined the thin markings and wondered if he had a better, slightly fuller tipped pen back at the house.  
He stepped off of the plane and was about to make his way to the nearest cafe for a cup of tea when he had an idea.  
“Let's see—my car is… parked outside…” he muttered aloud as he passed by all of the little shops and restaurants and things in the airport, and made his way to the big sliding double doors. He was greeted by the cool, crisp oceanic air lingering over San Francisco despite it being almost July: he peered across the parking lot to the sight of his car underneath the branches of an oak tree, a tree that reminded him of the one in Mia's front yard. The late afternoon sun shone over his head, but he disregarded the mirrored sunglasses in his pocket. He needed to give those back to Jerry after all.  
He stuck his hand into his jeans pocket for his keys and, when the shadow of the tree washed over him, he had a strange feeling inside of the pit of his stomach. A feeling that something horrible had happened near that tree.  
As he searched through the key ring for the one to the driver's side door, the feeling persisted, gnawing at the inside of the pit of his stomach as if he was hungry. But he had eaten a muffin on the plane so he knew the feeling did not emanate from hunger.  
He stuck the key into the lock beneath the handle and unlocked all four doors. He stared up at the tree looming overhead, the large green leaves softly rustling in the light breeze and the branches spiraling into smaller branches. The feeling was almost unbearable to the point in which he stuck his belongings into the back seat instead of the trunk.  
He climbed into the driver's seat and peered out the windshield at the trunk of the tree, at the dark elaborate grooves on the outside of the bark, at a few of the roots rising up out of the grass. He set a hand on his belly in hopes to ease the sensation digging at him from the inside. Perhaps the idea he had in mind would help alleviate it.  
He switched on his car and backed out of the spot, and headed his way into town with the window down at the mix tape he made for Mia in his cassette player. He had a feeling she would love “Highway Star” by Deep Purple and “My Eyes Have Seen You” by the Doors as much as he did. He had hope for Sandra opening another Smell the Magic shop down here in San Francisco as he spotted a bakery which sold strictly pies.  
Lars parked at the curb and headed inside for one of blueberry.  
He brought the box of pie back out to the car tucked underneath his arm and a plastic fork in his back pocket. He then drove back to El Cerrito, but he never drove back to his house. Instead, he posted up about a mile away, at the bottom of the hill amongst a slough of even more oak trees and low green shrubs. He kept the window rolled down so as to smell the salt from the bay.  
He unbuckled his seatbelt, and set the pie on his lap, and put his feet up on the dashboard before the passenger seat. The breeze blew into the car and he relaxed at the sensation on the side of his head. He took in a deep inhale of fresh ocean air through his nose and listened to the leaves rustling on the trees on the side of the road.  
“I am just going to—make sweet love to this pie until there is nothing left,” he said aloud to the trees.  
He returned to the pie resting in his lap and then took off the lid: it was large enough to satisfy himself plus Mia and the Bennett sisters. He leaned to the side a bit to reach into his pocket for the black fork. He lifted the pie to his face for a whiff of the crinkly golden crust on top. He knew he was about to venture into the unknown, and if he failed, he lost everything he worked for in the past eight months.  
“Oh GOOOOOD HELP US!” he yelped out into the forest.  
He stuck the fork into the crust and picked up a large bite in particular: a bundle of that golden crust enveloping the fresh blueberries and the accompanying sauce. He took a whiff of the bite before sticking it into his mouth: he slid the fork out from between his lips.  
Such bliss! But he knew if he wanted to win, he had to eat at a quick pace, that is if her ex husband could stomach the same amount of food as him. But he relaxed there in the front seat of his car with his feet up on the dashboard, taking slow bite after slow bite, every so often letting out a soft pleasured groan from the inside of his throat. The pie was delicious: some of the blueberries were tart thus making the back of his jaw tingle, while others tasted sweet and soft, sweet like kissing the back of Mia's hand. Meanwhile, the crust had the right amount of sweetness embedded within for a lovely sensuous dessert.  
The breeze cooled down even more as the sun hung low over the San Francisco Bay, and the trees only smelled sweeter from the sweet flavor of the pie in his lap.  
Lars reached halfway when he realized he had gotten that far and still could eat the rest of it. That is until a few bites later, the full feeling started to sink upon him and his stomach. It made no sense: he had been eating at every chance and every whim, and he had regained some pounds back as a result, and yet he found himself feeling full so soon. He paused with the tin in his lap and his hand on the center console next to him.  
“Jesus,” he muttered to himself upon swallowing the next bite. He flashed back on the time he had eaten that whole red velvet cake and she had promised him something more. Something more; except this time around Mia was six hundred miles away and not heading down for the Bay Area for another couple of days, and “something more” this time referred to another red velvet cake. He hoped the portions would be small because he thought about the idea of eating all of that food and losing out to him, the big monster of a man who wanted him dead.  
But then he wondered if the contest would be timed, and he would have to eat all of that food as both a race against the clock and his own undoing. Maybe that was why he started to feel full so soon.  
He stared down at the tin, holding less than half of the pie. It was like it mocked him, laughing in his face and making fun of the fact that he had a chance with Mia and he could lose it in a matter of bites.  
He focused on the feeling inside of his stomach and dipped the tines of the fork into the edge of the pie, the edge he had been digging at all this time. He shoveled a bite into his mouth, followed by another and another and another. He gave each bite a couple of chews before he swallowed: the next thing he knew he had inhaled another quarter of the pie. He thought of Mia, and he thought of Marcia and Sonia, and Ashley, and then he thought of his parents.  
How his parents loved her but he never got the opportunity to meet her parents. Despite feeling down about that, he knew why, even without Mia's explanation: they must have found out over Christmas that she was cheating on her husband with him and thus they disowned her.  
“If I lose this, I not only lose her,” he said aloud, “but she loses everything, too. It's not just me: it's her, too. She has nothing to lose.”  
He stuck the tines of the fork into the crust again and again for even more bites of pie. He could feel his belly swelling up, much like the time he ate the red velvet cake and when he ate the jambalaya in New Orleans. The jambalaya!  
He thought about that raging hurricane hanging over his head and the prospect of all of the flooding there in the inn: it was like eating with a gun pointed at his head, and he had eaten a great deal as a result.  
He shoveled in more bites of pie. He could do it and he knew it, and if Mia was there to watch him, she knew he could do it, too.  
Lars made his way to the very edge of the tin, scraping off the rest of the crust off of the inside. He put his right foot down on the floor and then shifted around there on the driver's seat. It was difficult from the steering wheel before him, but it was even more difficult from the fact he had just eaten a whole entire pie by himself.  
His stomach felt massive and bloated: he clasped a hand to his belly to feel the stuffed full sensation on the inside. He set down the tin on the empty passenger seat next to him and climbed out of the car, and wobbled and almost lost his balance from the heavy feeling inside of him.  
He peeled off his shirt and ambled towards the forest as if he was going to take a leak with his shirt in his hand. But he stood before the tallest tree, opened his mouth, and let out an enormous, deep rooted belch from the inside of his stomach. The biggest one yet, echoing off of the trunks of the trees and into every crevice of the forest. It felt as though his stomach was deflating like a balloon; he only stopped when he ran out of breath.  
Panting and clasping a hand to his bare belly, he stared down at the ground, feeling as though he had swallowed a rock, but the feeling had subsided. In fact, if anything, he felt like he could eat something else on top of that. He smirked, albeit one laced with a bit of nervousness, as he slung his shirt over his shoulder and returned to the car. He plopped back down into the driver's seat and ran his fingers through his hair before picking up the car key again.  
“You're going to have to do a lot better than that,” he said aloud, firing up the car again. “You are going to have to do so much better than that, you fuck stick.”


	128. Chapter 128

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Smell the Magic, established June 22, 1979 <3

He awoke the day before he knew Mia would show up down in the Bay Area with Sandra and Marcia for the baking competition. It was much like Valentine's Day in that he lay in his bed, but wrapped up in nothing more than a bed sheet this time around. He peered down at his body through his sleeping eyes to behold the sight of his belly, now rising up from his body once again in that low round bump, and lifted his hand out from underneath to touch himself. He could feel himself growing soft once again: in fact, when he bowed his head forward, he could feel the skin underneath his chin growing rounder with the bending of his neck.  
Lars lay his head back down on the pillow with a groan inside of his throat. He did not want to get up out of bed but rather lay within his own softness, the softness that was coming back to him and nourishing his body. He lay there with his hand upon himself, his eyes closed, and a little satisfied smile upon his face. But if only she was there to love him in return.  
The thought of Mia next to him made him open his eyes and gaze up at the ceiling. He thought about all of the things she had done for him and he wound up cheating on her with Angela. The thought of their encounters there in New Orleans ran through his mind as he counted the holes in the ceiling overhead. His one hope was that he never told her and he had faith in his ability to keep a secret after all.  
But he couldn't help but want for Mia to be there with him, next to him there in bed and giving him every part and every inch of her love. He longed for her touch and for her kiss. Add to this, he wanted to rid of the fact that he ever considered sleeping with Angela out of sympathy. But at the same time, he knew everyone had their drives out of their system and now was the time to show down Mia's husband.  
He rolled over in bed to make his belly hang and to relax his hips and his thighs. But no sooner than rolling over did he feel the first twinges of hunger bubble inside of his stomach. Since he had been on the road for some time, he had forgotten what he had in his pantry, or in his ice box for that matter. His own thoughts about Angela and Mia swirled about inside of his mind like a broken rolodex. Then he thought of Sonia.  
Sonia and her burning lust that seared right through his body and left him feeling sore and achy the next morning. He also had no idea if she was still with Kirk or if he should take Mia's word for it in her fourth letter to him.  
Too hungry to think straight and too impatient for the baking show and the eating contest, he peeled back the sheet and stuck out his legs over the edge of the bed. He sat there for a moment with his hands in between his bare thighs. He fetched up a heavy sigh, which he released through his nose and felt every inch of his torso expanding. He then glanced down at his belly, growing back onto his body accompanied with that small roll of fat on his waist poking out a bit over the waist band of his underwear. It would be a long time before he ate enough to the point in which the bottom of that little roll touched his thighs.  
He leaned back on his left hand so as to touch himself again with his right. He still had a little bit of that coarse dark hair growing around his belly button and up towards the middle of his chest, but at some point, the hair had rubbed off from his skin. Maybe that came from all of the times she rubbed his belly and stroked his chest, or maybe it was from all of the weight he had gained and then lost and his body was trying to balance itself out with his habits.  
He slid off of the bed and lifted his arms over his head to stretch his back. He scrunched his eyes shut as he bowed his head forward. With a bit more weight came some aches in his spine and his hips, but he knew he could handle the pain given he knew what his body could handle at this point.  
He pressed his hands against his hips and kept his spine bent back a bit before striding out of the room and into the kitchen.  
It would be another day of intensive and constant eating, beginning from the very moment he opened the refrigerator door for a container of yogurt and some strawberries. He would have to find some things at the market in town.  
Indeed, some time around noon, Lars threw on a pair of jeans, his Motorhead shirt, and his black boots before climbing back into his car for that little trip.  
“One of Us Must Know” by Bob Dylan from his mixtape for Mia played on the cassette player. He flashed back on the song she had written in Seattle, how the lyrics drew inspiration from Dylan: he then thought of the song he and Dave wrote at her first baking competition as he put on the mirrored sunglasses.  
He had a hunch about something.  
Once he backed out of the driveway, he doubled back down the hill as if heading down to Oakland instead of going into El Cerrito. She never did specify but he felt it as he drive along the edge of the water: he peered out the passenger side window at the distant sight of San Quentin nestled against the lush greenery, followed by Angel Island, and Alcatraz, and then the Golden Gate Bridge.  
He passed through Emeryville before reaching the outskirts of Oakland and the first stoplight. He turned his head to the sight of the vacant brick building on the corner with a pair of large dark bay windows. The window on the left beheld a bright neon yellow “Sold” sign above another sign reading: “Coming Soon: Smell the Magic, established 1979.”  
“Oh my—God,” he stammered at the sight of it. He could not resist the wide grin crossing over his face. Four new bakeries! He could not resist feeling the butterflies of excitement inside of his stomach as he pulled forward.  
He spotted another bakery on the side of the road, another bakery that sold pies, and he figured to go extra big this time around. He bought himself another pie, one of apple, and one that he knew would fill and expand his stomach just a little bit more given the large size and the fact it had that sweet looking crumble over those crisp, spicy apples. He knew he had that tub of ice cream back in his freezer, but he recalled there wasn't much left inside of the container.  
He figured to make it similar to the same spiel as with the blueberry pie, except this time around he pulled over to the shoreline of the Bay, to the vista point looking out to the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, and away from the freeway.  
He pulled up to the patch of grass, rhododendron bushes, and a line of low oak trees hanging over the waters, and climbed out with the pie in one hand and another fork in the other hand.  
Lars took a seat underneath one of the trees and right next to a bush of those pillowy white flowers carrying that soft fresh scent. He leaned back against the trunk of the tree before he took off the lid. He took a whiff of the pie and ran his tongue along his bottom lip before taking his first bite of pie for a taste test. The filling was a bit heavy on the cinnamon and brown sugar, and the apples tasted tart but the crumble on top had a nice gentle crunch as it glistened in the afternoon sun along with the chilly blue waters before him.  
Since he knew he would be eating as if he had a gun pointed at his head, he swallowed down the first two bites at a slow pace before picking it up. He was the only person on the grassy area and all of the passersby and cars on the freeway and the street behind him paid no attention to him, and so he could make an absolute pig of himself with this apple pie. Some bites he tilted his head back and slipped them into his mouth, while others he held over his mouth and let them fall onto the pad of his tongue.  
When he reached halfway, he kept going. In fact, it wasn't until he reached the last few bites of pie crust and crumble when he started to feel full. He still sat in an upright position by the time he licked the remaining crust on the tines of the fork and gave his belly a nice little pat followed by a gentle rub of the hand. He rested the back of his head against the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes to relish in the feeling: the one before gave him that heavy, bloated feeling given he had eaten slower for the first half, but this felt like eating a simple regular plate of food at dinner time.  
And then he remembered the contest consisted of eating a pie and then a cake. He opened his eyes to stare out at the placid blue waters looming before the soles of his outstretched feet. A gentle grumble emerged from the inside of his stomach and he gave himself another gentle rub of his hand.  
He flashed back on the first night in New Orleans with the hurricane, and then on the first night in Seattle when Mia was with him, and then he thought back to all of the times of being a young boy in Denmark, to those cold dark nights following Christmas and his birthday. All of the times he had something to eat to warm up his body out of the fear of freezing while he slept. The feeling akin to standing under the muzzle of a gun pointed at his head.  
“Of course,” he muttered aloud. “Of course. It all makes sense now.”  
Lars set the empty tin and the fork on the grass next to him before he climbed to his feet. He stifled a slight burp inside of his throat and then patted his chest before stooping down to pick up the tin.  
Now that full feeling showed itself: he stood upright and almost lost his balance from all of those apples and that sweet crust. He stifled a hiccup inside of his throat before heading up the grass back to his car. He climbed back into the driver's seat and drove back to El Cerrito.  
He unlocked the house again and, without hesitating for a second, he stepped into the kitchen. He headed for the freezer and opened the door so as to pick out that tub of ice cream. He lifted the lid and discovered there was enough left inside to fill a single bowl, or rather enough inside of there to fill up his belly just a little bit more. He picked a clean spoon out of the drawer and finished off the final few bites near the bottom with ease.  
“Yeah, he is going to have to do a lot better than that,” he said aloud, licking the spoon. “He is going to have to do a shit load better than that. Get out of my way, you bastard. Get the fuck out of my way.”


	129. Chapter 129

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Lie in circles on the sunlight  
> shine like diamonds on a dark (k)night.  
> Ain't no mercy in my smilin',  
> only fangs and sweet beguiling.”  
> -”Snake Song”, Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell

Lars awoke bright and early the day of the baking show, and the sight of the first rays of sunlight shining onto the wall opposite from his bed. He opened his eyes to nurse the feeling of the butterflies dancing on the inside of his stomach, or perhaps the feeling emanated from hunger. He rolled out of bed and placed his bare feet flat onto the floor. He stood up and stared down at his belly with that little roll of fat making its triumphant return to his waist. He rubbed his hand over his whole abdominal region before heading to the closet for that Polaroid camera.  
At least he believed the camera was in there. He searched through all of the stuff laying on the floor and found it nowhere.  
“Where is it?” he muttered aloud. “Where—is it?”  
He stood up from the carpet and headed out to the front of the house, and past his record player and his bookshelves in search of that little camera. He took a peek at the shelves and behind the player, places where he never would have imagined it lay in hiding but regardless of that fact, he searched on. He crawled before the front of the couch and peered underneath when he had an epiphany.  
“Oh, I know.”  
He smoothed his hair back from his neck and shoulders as he returned to his room for his luggage. He opened the top flap and delved through his clothes, and he made a mental note to do laundry that day before heading out to the show, followed by his journal, and then there at the bottom stood the camera in question. He picked it up from its hiding place and wiped off the lens with the pad of his thumb; he remained there on the carpet, on his knees, as he held it over his head with one hand. He leaned back a bit so he knew he would get his chest, his belly, and his thighs in the shot.  
He pressed the button, thus triggering the flash of the light. He blinked several times as the Polaroid fell out of the slot and tumbled onto the carpet before him.  
He set the camera down on the floor so as to pick up that photograph and waved it about before taking a look at his full face and his body from above: he had a slight roundness about his waist now, and when he gave his flesh a stroke of the tips of his fingers, he could feel the love emerging inside of him.  
Lars then climbed to his feet to get dressed and fetch a bite of breakfast.  
But once he had tugged his jeans on over his hips and legs, the phone rang.  
He darted into the living room for the cordless and pressed the button as soon as he took a seat on the couch.  
“Hello?” His voice broke.  
“Buenas dias, papi.”  
His heart skipped a beat and he could not resist the smile from crossing his face.  
“God morgen, min kærlighed,” he greeted her, “hvordan har du det? I, I mean, how are you?”  
“I am well,” she giggled at him, “—I just woke up.”  
“Are you flying down today or—”  
“We came in last night,” she told him, clearing her throat.  
“Last night?” he echoed, raising his eyebrows. “Well, why didn't you say anything? I would have let you and Marcia and Sandra stay here at the house with me.”  
“The organizers wanted us to stay in a hotel,” she pointed out.  
“Ahh, I see.” He leaned back against the cushion of the couch and crossed his left leg over his right knee.  
“So,” she started in that husky voice once again, “—it sounds like you just woke up, too.”  
“As a matter of fact, I did. I was just about to get dressed and then—you know. Get something to eat for breakfast.”  
“Ooooh, what do you have in mind?” He heard a rustling on her end, and he knew she was still in bed.  
“I am not sure,” he confessed, rubbing the inside of his thighs. “You know, I have been on the road for the past month and so I really have no idea what I have with me in terms of food.”  
“There is a—a, er—” she cleared her throat. “There is a breakfast buffet here, though. Maybe we can strike a deal with the organizers and let you in for a little nosh of something to eat.”  
“Oh? Where are you staying at?”  
“In Daly City—on, er—hang on a second—”  
“Take your time, darling.”  
“Junipero Serra Boulevard,” she replied after a brief pause.  
“Junipero Serra—oh, I know where that is. I know exactly where that is, it is—er, not too far from the water and off of the Highway near Lake Merced. I have wanted to take you out that way, too.”  
“It's beautiful. I can see the ocean from the window—”  
“Who are you talking to?” Marcia's voice behind her asked.  
“What's that?” her voice fell away from the mouthpiece.  
“Who are you talking to?”  
“Lars.”  
“Ohhhh, ooooh—hey, sexy!” she exclaimed from across the room, and she and Mia both giggled at the same time; Lars tilted his head back and lay his arm over the top of the couch.  
“Good morning, Marcia—my darling,” he greeted her, feeling his face grow warm.  
“He says good morning, darling,” Mia echoed and Marcia made a sound that resembled a squeaky door.  
“Anyways—you will come over, right?” she asked him in a lower voice.  
“Absolutely. Just—er—let me find a shirt. I am just wearing pants right now.”  
“Or—you can come over without anything covering your upper body.”  
“Come over without a shirt!” Marcia called out from behind her, and Mia shushed her.  
“My goodness,” he remarked to her.  
“She and Kirk split so she's been kinda—hot right now,” she explained in a near whisper.  
“Oh, did they really?”  
“Yeah, but he and Sonia are together.”  
“That does not surprise me, to be honest,” he confessed, sitting upright. “Anyways—I shall find a shirt and my shoes and mosey on out of here and over there faster than you can say jeg vil have dig så slemt lige nu.”  
“And, Lars?” she caught him before he could hang up.  
“Yes?”  
“I love you,” she said it so light the words might as well have come on the wind from the ocean. He swallowed, feeling as though the words had punched him right in the stomach. She had said it to him a few times before, in writing and on the night she made her confession about his being the other man, but this had another nuance to it. This time, he heard it for the first time from her as a freed woman, and not one whom of which fought for her life against her crazed ex husband. He nibbled on his bottom lip as he tried to keep the butterflies at bay; he stared at the bright yellow rays of the sunrise shining through his living room window.  
“I love you, too,” he returned the favor, and he heard her give a soft moan into the mouthpiece of the phone. He was eager to feel her touch as they both hung up at the same time. He stood to his feet and returned to his room to fetch one of his buttoned shirts: the day would be a hearty one for his stomach and thus he might as well prepare for the utter avalanche of food about to fall upon him as he left the top two buttons undone.  
He swiped Jerry's mirrored sunglasses off of the table next to the arm of the couch and, before he headed out of the house, he turned back around to the tennis racket in the far corner of the room. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something told him to bring it with him just in case. But in case of what?  
He ambled back across the room and scooped it up by the handle off of the carpet.  
He examined those translucent strings woven into that mesh pattern, and the cold metal edge lining it on the outside.  
“Waffles,” he said aloud, giving the racket a twirl inside of his hand. “I shall have waffles. Big Belgian waffles with lots of butter.”  
He wheeled back around, held the racket over his shoulder, and slid the sunglasses on over his face before heading out of the front door to his car in the driveway. He stuck the racket into the seat next to him before he climbed into the driver's seat and fired up the car.  
He made a mental note to tell Mia about the tape he had made for her as he drove his way down from El Cerrito to the Bay Bridge.  
Lars flashed back on the incident at Smell the Magic and the sight of her husband's shabby car filling up their rear view mirrors. Indeed, since the eating contest took place around the time of the baking show, every so often he took a glimpse in his mirrors for that car in question as he turned onto the bridge. He peered over at the tennis racket, sitting there with its handle leaning up against the back of the passenger seat.  
As he crossed those cold bay waters, still dark with nightfall and cold in spite of the summer time, he flashed back on Ellen there taking her final steps at the bar in New Orleans. He had already drawn her in his journal, but he needed something more, especially since she helped him rekindle the flame between him and Mia. When he reached the halfway point of the bridge, he took another glimpse at the tennis racket. He had never done this before, but since tennis was now a mere part of his history rather than his career, he decided to give it a try.  
“I hereby christen you as Ellen,” he said aloud to the racket as a beam of sunlight shone into the side mirror on the passenger side, and reflected onto the racket. He raised his eyebrows at the sight.  
Soon he reached the outskirts of San Francisco, those low boutiques and quaint, bright colored houses lining the streets, and headed on through China Town until he met up with the Pacific Coast Highway.  
He thought back to the time he and Mia drove up from the Bay Area along that highway, all of the stops they had made along the way and the untouched beauty of the Oregon Coast remaining fresh in his memory as if it had happened the day before. She had promised to take him back to Eureka when the weather permitted, and here it was summer. He made another mental note to bring it up to her as signs for Daly City entered his view.  
Lars merged over to the right hand lane when something caught his eye. He took a glimpse in his mirror at the sight of that shabby car again. He licked his lips as he hoped the driver of that car was another person, and if it was that person, he hoped they would not make sense of the Deep Purple and Heart and Soul: Copenhagen stickers in his back window. Never in a million years did he so much as dream about the thought of being strung up by his own petard by something as superfluous as his taste in music or his home country. He pressed on to the exit taking him out to the park surrounding Lake Merced, a park that reminded him of Lake Oswego.  
He hung a right turn and pressed onward down the street: every so often, he took a glimpse in his rear view mirror to assure that car never followed him. He drove a few blocks through the tight knit neighborhood until he spotted their mission style hotel looking out to the lake and in turn, the ocean.  
He took the first spot near the front doors and beside a rhododendron bush, and hesitated, making sure the car had kept its distance from him. Once he felt the coast was clear, he tugged the nose piece of the sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and lingered over the cassette player. He pressed eject and the tape stuck out of the slot for him. He picked the case out of the center console to put it inside, and then he picked up the tennis racket by the handle before stepping out to the bright morning light.  
The warmth of the day loomed over him as he strode across the parking lot with the racket over his shoulder and Mia's mix tape in his jeans pocket. He shot out his free hand to open the front door. He took off the sunglasses to examine the front lobby, a cozy but bright room with two couches across from the front desk and a corridor on either side of the room in front of him. He knew the breakfast buffet had to be in there somewhere. He had taken three steps forward when he heard a voice to his left call his name.  
“Lars!”  
He turned to see Marcia and Mia running towards him, both of them dressed in their black baking outfits.  
“Hey, I know you two lovely Yanks,” he replied with a smirk. Mia reached him first, putting her arms around his waist and bringing her lips onto his: he held out the tennis racket behind her head as if he had made a conquest. She pressed either side of his face with both of her hands while he pulled her in closer to his body. She pulled her head back from him so she could touch his chest, and then he showed her the tennis racket. Her face lit up at the sight of it.  
“You gonna spank us with that?” Marcia cracked.  
“That's for me to know and for you to find out, darling,” he retorted with a wink and the two of them giggled.  
“Anyways, you must be starving,” said Mia as they turned towards the corridor on the right to head to the room which held the buffet.  
“I pretty much am,” he answered with a smirk and a wrap of his free arm around her shoulders. “It smells gorgeous over here, too. It is a big day today after all.”  
“That it is,” Marcia noted, her expression turning serious.  
“You don't want anything too heavy or weighty because it'll too much pressure on your stomach,” Mia pointed out.  
“But I am hungry!” he insisted as they walked past the couches.  
“That's—kind of the point, though,” said Marcia with a raise of one of her eyebrows. “You've got to stretch out your belly before hand—and I can see you have, too, oh boy! But it's so you've got a huge appetite by the time show time rolls around, so you can eat all of that food. Otherwise—you know.” She shrugged her shoulders at the thought.  
“I lose,” was all he could say as they entered the cozy room; he glanced at Mia, whose eyes grew big and glassy at him.  
Lars had promised himself a plate of Belgian waffles but after hearing that, he instead returned to his home on the outskirts Copenhagen, and all of the humble food within Denmark. He would make a de facto return to home that morning, turning to the fresh melon and berries awaiting him in the middle of the table, and the hot water for a cup of tea. He thought back to those frigid winter mornings around his birthday where the sky still hung with total darkness, even at this time in the morning, and he kicked back a bowl of porridge before heading up to the room with the radiator to drum on old paint cans. Those cold autumnal nights wherein the snow from the Arctic drifted down from the cold royal blue sky outside and onto his window sill with Black Sabbath's album Paranoid playing on his record player.  
He only had two cubes of fresh crenshaw and nibbled on a couple of raspberries while Mia and Marcia made Belgian waffles for themselves, with all the powdered sugar and butter Lars could ever ask for himself, and links of sausage, and large cups of blond coffee.  
He itched for something more, but he had to keep his desire at bay for the time being. Today was not a day in which he could have his cake and eat it, too.  
When he downed his cup of tea, he knew it wasn't enough to keep himself satisfied. But he needed to not eat for a while because he feared losing. It felt as though his mind, his heart, his stomach, and his genitals were all at war with each other at the moment. He sat there in the chair at the table across from Mia and Marcia, and with the tennis racket leaning against the right leg of the table, when he remembered the mix tape in his pocket.  
He let go of his cup of tea so as to stick his hand into his pocket.  
“Mia, darling,” he piped up. She raised her eyebrows at him as she held her cup of coffee before her face. He held out the case for her. “This is for you.”  
Mia set down the mug to take the case from him: she opened it to examine the cassette.  
“'Lars and Mia's Infinite Playlist,'” she read aloud.  
“Awwww,” Marcia cooed, slicing one of her links of sausage. “Aw!”  
Mia climbed to her feet and he followed suit. They embraced right there in front of Marcia and everyone in the room. He kissed her on the lips and then gazed into her eyes.  
Someone clearing their throat at an outlandish tone from behind them caught their attention. Marcia gasped and everyone in the room fell silent. Lars turned around to see an old man, the same man who tried to hit him in the head at the Mother Love Bone concert, and another man whom he recognized from that shabby car and the incident at Smell the Magic.  
“There he is,” said the old man with a sneer, “pretty boy.”  
Lars swallowed as Mia clung closer to his chest and his hungry belly. It was that moment he knew he stood face to face with Wayne and Will Davidson.


	130. Chapter 130

Marcia stood behind Lars' back while Mia clutched at the front of his shirt and his chest. He could feel her thundering heart beat on the inside of her breasts. He thought about running his hand down her back and then stroking her breasts right in front of them, both out of spite and to calm her down. His heart hammered inside of his chest at the sight of them and he tried to keep himself calm, but he could not resist quivering and shaking.  
“Can we take this outside, please?” Marcia suggested.  
“No,” Wayne told her off before he lumbered closer to Lars and Mia. She sank closer to his chest; he glanced down at her without turning his head, then shifted his weight in that spot. He felt something hard against the lower part of his chest and he realized that was her hand holding the cassette tape. His bottom lip trembled at the sight of the large man looming before him. Cliff entered his mind right then, skidding into the room with a black cowboy hat on his head and a bottle of beer in one hand, and taking a swig before tackling him and saving the day. He also wondered of the whereabouts of both Dave and James.  
He stared up at this gargantuan of a man lumbering up before him. Mia clutched onto the softest part of his waist while Marcia took a seat in Lars' chair to stay out of his sight. The whole room fell silent as Wayne towered over Lars' head and the terrified expression on his face.  
“What are you doing,” he growled into his face, “with my woman?”  
Lars swallowed as Mia sank behind the side of his chest.  
“Who—said—she was your woman?” he stammered; the fresh fruit he had eaten had already left his stomach and he wanted something else, something more. But he needed to resist until the moment he stared down this man, head to head, outside of the baking competition.  
“Me,” he retorted, “I did. She is my woman. I married her and you and her have been sneaking around without me knowing.”  
Mia started to shudder and Lars stroked her shoulder in hopes to keep her at ease.  
“Give her back to me,” he ordered Lars.  
“No,” he snapped back. “Besides, you and I must eat to get her. So—” He swallowed again; it was almost as if he had nothing to eat or drink at all that morning. “—until then—she is mine.”  
“Oh, yeah,” Wayne taunted, “yeah, that's right. We've got that little eating contest later today. Like your little flat stomach can face up to my big micro brewery here—”  
Mia and Marcia both had been shuddering so hard and so much that the tennis racket, which Lars had leaned against the leg of the table, twirled on its head before falling onto the floor next to them.  
“Someone's tennis racket,” Will pointed out.  
“Mine, too,” Lars replied, his stomach ready to let out a rumble.  
“Yours?!” Wayne laughed.  
“Taking a married woman and swingin' a tennis racket all around with your long hair and dolly face,” Will added with a snort.  
“He apparently loves sweets, too,” Wayne added with a chuckle.  
“Son, your woman ran off with a girly man! A hermaphrodite!” Will turned to Lars with a sneer on his face. “You really are a sissy!”  
“For your information,” he started, terse, “tennis is not for sissies.”  
“It's not for sissies, he says,” Will mocked, “is that why that little wet backed whore behind you can't keep her hands to herself and started touching you?”  
“If you call her that again, I swear—” Lars blurted out.  
“What?” Will snarled, pressing his hands to his hips. “What are you going to do?”  
Lars knitted his knees together as he struggled to think of some witty comeback.  
“I will vomit all over your face,” he sputtered.  
“Ooh, that's real original,” Wayne jeered. “When's your baking show, Mia?”  
She had dipped behind Lars' shoulder, out of their sight; meanwhile, Marcia sank down in the chair to remain out of sight. The two girls had put him at the forefront, right on the edge of the crossfire.  
“When's your baking show!”  
“Th-Three,” she choked out. “By the—the lake. Lake Merced. It's going to be—outdoors.”  
“Be there,” Wayne ordered in a menacing growl of a voice, looming before Lars' face to where he could smell his hot breath, stale with old alcohol. “Be there, or I swear to God, I will shove that tennis racket up your little pansy ass and serve you right back to where you came from, you little worm.”  
He stood upright, wheeled around and followed his father out of the breakfast buffet. But before leaving the room, Will snatched up the tennis racket and wagged his finger before Lars' face.  
“You better win or else you lose the whore and the racket,” he warned before heading out of the room. All of the patrons stared on at Lars, Mia, and Marcia in stunned silence.  
He turned his head to look at Mia and the tears in her eyes.  
“Oh, God,” she whispered, and he threw his arms around her. “Oh, God!”  
He closed his eyes as she whimpered into his ear. The tip of his nose lingered next to her luscious dark hair and he relished in the clean smell within: his hands caressed her back and her chest pressed against the front of his shirt. She ran her fingers through his hair and held onto the little love handles over his hips.  
“I feel sick,” he confessed.  
“Please win the contest,” she whispered, her voice breaking with tears.  
“I must,” he whispered back to her, “not just for you, but for myself as well.”

*******************

It would be another hour before Mia and Marcia left the hotel for the park by Lake Merced, and Lars vowed to arrive within time. He contemplated driving back up to his house to call up his parents and then James, Kirk, Jason, and Dave that the show was about to go down between him and Mia's ex husband. But he knew if he drove back to El Cerrito, either the two of them would track him down or he would be forced to run off somewhere and head into hiding for some time. He thought of the possibility of leaving the country and returning to Denmark if push led to shove.  
At around ten thirty, after reclining back in the driver's seat of his car, he fired up the car and drove up to the park surrounding Lake Merced. He could smell the salt from the ocean, just a mere stone's throw away from there. The competitors had pitched a ring of white tents near the water and under all of the oak trees so as to protect them all from the heat of the day. Next door to the tents stood a row of silvery baby ovens upon palettes for portability.  
He pulled into the parking lot and found a car filled every single spot before the front of the park. He also felt that each spot was reserved for everyone partaking in the show and thus, he turned around in the middle of the pavement to make a return to the street. He parked against the curb and within range of the tents so he could make a straight beeline to and from his car.  
He locked the doors, stuffed the key into his jeans pocket, and strode across the grass without a sound. Since he had a mere few morsels of food to eat that day, his stomach carried an empty, hollow feeling inside, like a deflated balloon. No pain ravaged him like when he had forgone two days without eating anything after his encounters with Sonia, but he was indeed running on fumes and he started to cave in as a result.  
He rounded the one tent on the end and searched the row for the sign decreeing Smell the Magic. He passed Silver Creek Cakes hailing from Yakima, Washington, followed by Cold Crème from Ashland, Oregon and Madame X from Eureka, California, then Sweet Pea from down in Pasadena—  
“There he is!” Sandra greeted him from behind the fourth table and while holding a bright red ceramic bowl under her arm.  
“Here I am now,” he replied, removing the mirrored sunglasses and showing her a smile, albeit a nervous smile. Marcia, who tied her apron around her waist, turned around to flash him a grin.  
“There's our man of the hour,” she declared, “how are you feeling right now?”  
“Starving. Nervous as holy hell, too.”  
“Well, it's another few hours until we lift off here,” Sandra told him, setting the bowl down on the table between them. “And Madame X is taking the liberty of baking the pies while we're doing the two cakes.”  
“Which means you better get moving,” he followed along, putting his sunglasses back on and rubbing his hands together.  
“Mia's gonna do the cakes, though,” Marcia told him.  
“Oh?”  
“Yeah. She had to get the food coloring out of her car and—oh, here she is.”  
Mia ducked underneath the opening flap at the back of their tent with two bottles of red food coloring in either hand. Her face softened at the sight of him.  
“There's my baby,” she greeted him, leaning over the table to kiss him on the lips. He tugged the nose piece of the sunglasses down his nose to look at her in the eye.  
“I take secrets to the grave if I must,” he told her, “and I take promises to heart. And even if the hollow feeling in the pit of my own nauseated stomach is not enough for that man, then what have I done?”  
“You have done enough, my love,” she said to him. “And you are about to go forth for me, like the dark knight you are.”  
His heart skipped several beats at the sound of the phrase “dark knight” given Sonia had called him that during their encounter.  
“You best to be getting right down to it,” he confessed to her, feeling his heart sink inside of his chest.  
“This will be all for you, my love,” she whispered to him, kissing his lips again. He sighed through his nose as he backed away from her and the table, and he turned to face the tent over the bakery for Madame X and their all black uniforms. For a moment, he watched the two bakers prepare to make the blueberry pies for him and Wayne later that day before walking back out towards the ovens and the oak trees. He had plenty of time between that moment and the time the pie and the cake stood before him, and thus, he took a seat on the grass before the tree behind Madame X and Smell the Magic. He stretched out his legs and struggled to keep the growing hunger from inside of his stomach from worsening with each minute.  
He thought he had dozed off when he awoke to the sight of Will looming over him with a sneer on his face. Lars glared at him without lifting up his head.  
“You look like the kind of little bitch I would've fucked in prison,” he growled. Lars swallowed again as he watched them disappear around the corner of the tent on the end.  
Then, out of the blue, the hollow feeling inside of his stomach morphed into a deep ache from the hunger. He wanted to eat something so bad, but he had to remain patient given the cakes and the pies were in the process of baking. But the pain crept up inside, digging at the pit of his stomach and leaving a pile of nausea in its wake. Mia told him to rub his belly when he feels full, but she never told him to rub his belly when he was starving. His hand shaking, he gave himself a gentle rub all along his waist. While the feel of his own hand granted him some relief, it wasn't enough.  
He folded his arms over the whole middle of his body and brought his knees closer to his chest. He bowed his head to bring his body into the fetal position, but even that would not suffice the ache inside of his stomach. He wanted to curl up right there when a familiar voice caught his attention.  
“Lars? Lars, are you alright?”  
He lifted his head to see Sonia standing over him, wearing bright red shorts and a matching tank top.  
“Feed—Feed me,” he stammered, his whole entire body quaking. “So—so—so—fucking—hungry.”  
“Well,” she began, crouching down before him as the breeze from the ocean blew through her hair, “Marcia told me to come over here to tell you that the ovens are nearing the end of their cycle. The contest will start soon. Come with me—we're all waiting for you.”


	131. Chapter 131

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Cool cherry cream, a nice apple tart,  
> I feel your taste all the time we're apart.  
> Coconut fudge, really blows down those blues,  
> but you'll have to have them all pulled out  
> after the Savoy truffle!”  
> -”Savoy Truffle”, The Beatles

Sonia kept her arm around Lars' shoulders as she guided him to the nearest picnic table underneath the tallest oak tree down by the water. He kept one arm set upon his waist to keep the ache inside at bay but his own touch still did the bare minimum to ease the feeling.  
She guided him to the grated bench underneath the matching grated table. He took a seat while she lingered behind him with her hands upon his shoulders. She massaged his shoulders, her touch as light and gentle as a feather. He wanted to ask her what she had done to him the night they were together that left him feeling sore and achy all over, but he decided not to given people started to congregate all around them.  
The sound of a timer going off caught his attention, and he closed his eyes in anticipation. He sat there, feeling Sonia's hands upon his shoulders, and the hunger inside of his stomach creeping up the interior of his spine like a serpent. It was agonizing, having not eaten since that morning, and all he had to eat were those few pieces of fruit and that cup of tea. He imagined his drum kit before him: the cake and the pie both played the role of his tom toms and his snare in that respective order, while the fork behaved like his stick. This was akin to performing for a show.  
But when he felt someone take a seat across the table from him there on the opposite bench, he opened his eyes to see Wayne, glowering at him like a hungry lion ready to pounce upon prey, and the fantasy disappeared from there. He had changed his clothes to a fitted white long sleeved shirt despite of the warmth hanging over them and his hair was disheveled.  
Lars felt Sonia lower her head so as to linger next to the side of his face.  
“You're going down,” Wayne threatened him.  
“You think that is going to intimidate me?” he retorted with a slight raise of his eyebrows.  
“My dad told me that it's supposed to get into the heads of guys like you.”  
“Guys like me?”  
“Guys like him?” Sonia joined in.  
“Stay out of this, Sonia,” Wayne ordered. “Little bitch.”  
“Hey, don't talk to her like that,” Lars snapped.  
“I can fucking talk to her however I damn well please,” Wayne retorted. “But yeah. Guys like you. Guys like you who chase women's ass and use them to pleasure yourself.”  
“Pot calling the kettle black,” Sonia pointed out.  
“I said stay out of this!”  
“Are you going to run your mouth off for hours on end or are we going to fight like men?” Lars demanded.  
“Fight like men? That is if you're a man at all. You sound like you just crawled out of the armpit state, also known as New Jersey, and then inhaled a shitload of helium along the way.”  
“I bet you are just using that as an excuse for the smallness of your dick.”  
Sonia let out a loud cackle at that, and a few more people followed suit. Wayne, on the other hand, was not amused.  
Mia and one of the bakers from Madame X emerged from their respective tents with the cakes and the pies in either hand. She placed the cake in her left hand down on the table before Lars and Sonia: it was a two tier cake, the bottom as big around as a gallon of milk, while the top was about as a cup.  
“These were each measured by Angela Shepherd, the organizer of the contest,” Mia told them as she placed the second one before Wayne's face; but as Lars watched her, he noticed something off about it. “The pies were, too.”  
The baker from Madame X, a woman with a full work of foundation over her face, set down the first pie tin before Lars' chest, and then she placed the one before Wayne's side of the table. Lars watched her turn her back to them and disappear into the growing crowd.  
“Alright, gentlemen,” said Sonia as more people gathered around the picnic table. “The rules are simple: there's no time but whoever finishes first wins and gets the girl and the tennis racket. The loser has to wear the badge of shame like a scarlet letter for the rest of his life.”  
She handed Lars a fork, and then she handed Wayne one as well.  
“Go when you're both ready,” she commanded.  
“Ladies first,” said Wayne, gesturing at Lars.  
“Very funny,” he retorted with a roll of his eyes. He stuck the tines of the fork into the side of the bottom tier of the cake since he knew it was heavier than the fresh blueberry pie. He stuck it into his mouth for a taste test, glaring hard across the table all the while. The cake felt smooth like silk against his tongue while the frosting carried very little sweetness to it.  
Wayne flashed him a sneer as he did the same thing for his first bite of cake. He held the fork in his mouth when he grimaced. He and Lars both swallowed at the same time.  
“Fuck, this tastes like nothing!” he exclaimed. “The frosting is too sweet, too!”  
Lars glanced at Mia, who stood behind Wayne and next to Marcia, and flashed him a wink. It hit him like a stroke of brilliance. Never changing his expression, he took another bite, followed by another and another and another. He learned his lesson from eating the pies in his car and down by the water: taste first, then pick up the pace, just like drumming before a ten minute jam. Wayne proceeded to sneer at him from across the table.  
“Europeans and your lack of taste buds,” he grumbled as he shoveled into the cake.  
Lars kept one hand on the top of the table as he ate up both of the tiers as if they were two dishes of jambalaya or a singular plate of pandekager. Each bite brought ease to his pained stomach; every so often, he peered up at Wayne, who took a few bites and almost gagged from the sweetness of the frosting. But Lars' cake maintained its smoothness and softness, like kissing Mia's lips, and the frosting tasted of butter and milk. He finished the top tier and a few people applauded.  
“How we doing?” Sandra called from the back of the crowd.  
“Fantastic,” Lars replied with his mouth full.  
“Too sweet!” Wayne complained. Mia rolled her eyes while Lars persisted, bite after bite, the red soft interior seducing him for more. Sandra stood behind him with Sonia so as to watch him. He dropped his hand onto his waist to touch himself and his belly never expanded or grew from the increasing amount of red velvet cake inside of him. Nevertheless, when no one paid attention to his other hand, he unfastened the button of his jeans. He need not let a button fly off in the middle of everything where everyone could see him.  
“I called your mom about an hour ago,” he heard Sandra whisper to Sonia, “she and Olivia are on their way down here from Seattle for the show and for this little competition here.”  
He remembered what Angela told him about Wayne's reason behind his firing and he wolfed the final two bites of cake before snapping his fingers at Marcia for a napkin. He could feel the beast inside of him growling, residing there inside of his stomach. He need not cheat to win Mia's heart, that is not again.  
Lars stared at Wayne, who had pieces of frosting clinging to the skin around his mouth and an ugly grimace twisted upon his face. He just looked like a pig, a fat pig in a wig who had nothing in between his ears or his legs, and with the most hideous choice of clothing for himself. He watched his skin glow from the warmth of the afternoon, or from eating too much sugar.  
Marcia returned to the picnic table with a few folded paper napkins for Lars.  
“Thank you, darling,” he told her in a low voice as his stomach let out a quiet grumble. He wiped his mouth before picking up his fork once again to start on the pie. The top was thin and flaky, but beheld a lovely golden color to it; the one baker had carved an “X” right in the middle of the crust. Lars stuck the tines of the fork on the side of the tin facing him and scooped out a large bite of blueberry filling enveloped in the crust. The filling was a little bit tart while the crust reminded him of the stale danish he had discovered outside of that other bakery up in Portland.  
He almost gagged on it but he was in the thick of it all now.  
He thought about doing what he did in his car and putting his feet up on the table and placing the tin on his chest all the while, but this was a competition. He kept one arm around the side of the tin as he shoveled in bite after bite.  
Wayne finally choked down the rest of his cake and pushed the plate across the table. Lars continued on as if nothing was happening, remaining focused on the pie like it posed as his snare drum. He swallowed down the crust, the crust which tasted like cardboard sprinkled with tiny glimmers of brown sugar, and the blueberries, tiny and tangy enough to bring a tingle at the back of his jaw.  
“God, this is horrible!” Wayne moaned, reaching for his pie. Lars swallowed a bite at the halfway point and glared at him.  
“Shut up and eat your garbage,” he ordered, and the baker from Madame X giggled.  
“Who you calling garbage?” Wayne retorted, shoveling in one bite, followed by a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth. Lars picked up the pace because he knew the pie had been crafted and pieced together by someone unbiased to them. He wolfed down all of the crust and the filling, some of it falling out of his mouth and onto the top of the table but he didn't care. He only cared about eating, and eating to be the hero and the bigger man.  
When he reached the final sliver of filling and crust, a piece half the size of the palm of his hand, that full feeling came up almost out of the blue. He was relieved he had unbuttoned his jeans but at the same time, he felt that did not suffice the enormous feeling emerging inside of his stomach. He could feel his waist filling out with more and more bites. Wayne, meanwhile, hit halfway.  
Lars peered up at Mia, who clasped her hand to her mouth to keep herself from screaming, or vomiting. He took in those final four bites, and then he stared at the last one as if it mocked him from a distance. Wayne neared the same exact spot when Lars picked that final piece for the taking and slid it into his mouth. He threw down his fork and stood to his feet to pump his fists into the air. Everyone in the crowd cheered for him.  
“I won!” he shrieked, his mouth still full. “I WON! I WON! I WON!”  
“IN YOUR FUCKING FACE!” Sonia joined in. Mia rounded the table with tears in her eyes as Wayne wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  
“LARS!” she cried out, her voice breaking. His whole belly feeling distended and heavy, he took one foot out from underneath the bench and stood there to embrace her. He swallowed the bite of pie when she put her arms around his waist and kissed him on the lips.  
“Oh God—I love you so much,” she whispered into his ear. “Thank you—gracias—gracias—”  
Lars groaned inside of his throat. He had eaten so much, more than he ever had had in his life. The taste of the red velvet and the blueberries lingered in the back of his throat and he knew he would be belching with those flavors embedded within for a bit. Mia lingered back to run her hand down his belly; he felt someone hug him from behind, and then Marcia join in from the side. Sandra returned to the crowd with a plate of those Puerto Rican donuts.  
“There he is!” she declared as the three women let go of him. “Would you like a donut?”  
“No thank you, I am absolutely stuffed,” he replied, and then he stopped. “Wait a minute, where is my—”  
He turned around to see Wayne had left the table. Against the full feeling inside of his stomach, he felt his heart sink.  
“No,” he said under his breath.  
“The racket!” Marcia declared.  
“Looking for this, pretty boy?”  
Everyone turned around to see Will standing before the driver's side of Lars' car, holding his tennis racket over the roof.  
“No,” he repeated in a louder voice.  
“What,” said Sonia. Will raised the racket.  
“What?” he mocked her.  
“What!” she repeated as he slammed the end of the handle into the window. The glass shattered into a million pieces.  
“WHAT!”  
“No!” Lars screeched. He let go of Mia and broke into a run despite the loose button on his jeans. He reached about five steps when a searing pain surged up his right side. He clasped his hands to the side of his shirt and staggered to the side. “Ow! OW, FOCK!”  
He fell onto the grass on his knees as Sonia, Marcia, and a few other people chased after Will, who had already climbed into the driver's seat of Lars' car and ducked underneath the steering wheel to hot wire it.  
“NO, GOD DAMN IT!” he shouted as his car roared to life. Will pulled away from the curb before Sonia and Marcia could do anything. He stared on in horror at the sight of that old man stealing his car, but all he could do was kneel on the grass with his hands clasped onto his side to ease the pain of the stitch. He grimaced as he bowed his head and parted his lips to let out a pained gasp.  
“—fock.”


	132. Chapter 132

“I cannot believe he stole my car.”  
Lars lay down on his back, there on the grass underneath one of the oak trees and with his pants still unbuttoned. It was about ten minutes before the baking competition began and everyone had interspersed back to the tents. One of the bakers from Madame X had called the police while all of the other bakers tended to preparations for the show; Sonia vowed to give a full description of Lars' car as Sandra and Marcia returned to their tent. Mia ambled over to Lars under the tree and lay down on her next to him; she hoisted herself on her left arm to look at him in the eye. He licked his lips from thirst, or out of nerves.  
“Hey,” she greeted him in a low voice.  
“Cannot believe he stole my car,” he repeated, “and my racket. He fucking stole my racket and broke my own window with it.”  
“We will get it back, don't worry,” she assured him with a gentle pat on his belly.  
He lifted himself up onto his elbows and felt everything inside of his stomach slosh around as if he carried a heavy water balloon inside of his body.  
“Oh—holy shit,” he muttered, sighing through his mouth.  
“You okay?”  
“Oh, yeah, it is just—I ate two whole desserts by myself at the speed of darkness. What was up with that cake?”  
“I added a little too much food coloring and sugar to his,” she explained, running her tongue along the top of her bottom lip. “I also made yours a little bit smaller because I learned my lesson after the first time you ate that whole cake by yourself. I wasn't going to let you lose and so I sabotaged his and made yours such that you wouldn't get a tummy ache.”  
“What about Angela, though?” he asked her, rolling his head over the grass. “She measured the cakes.”  
“Angela's not even here,” she explained. “She's back home in Seattle. Either she couldn't make it or she chickened out even though this whole thing was her idea. She and Ben are probably smoking pot and shagging each other right now as we speak. I lied and made the whole thing up about her measuring the cakes to help you win.”  
“Just how you lied to protect me,” he recalled. “And like how I would lie to protect you, like how I would lie to protect James, Kirk, and Jason.”  
He sighed through his nose before he lay back down on the grass with his arms by his sides. He lay still for a moment and then he brought his knees up to let two passersby walk past him. Mia tucked a strand of hair as she showed him a warm smile.  
“Can I get you anything?” she sweetly asked him.  
“A glass of water, please,” he told her, “I am really thirsty and I am trying so hard not to burp up red velvet covered blueberries.”  
“Okay.” She leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek, and then she kissed him on the lips once, twice, four times: on the fifth time, she held onto the side of his face. He closed his eyes as she rolled over onto his chest. She kissed him again with a soft groan inside of her throat. She lay her head on his chest and massaged the fronts of his shoulders before she lifted herself up off of the ground to fetch him some water. Sandra strode past him, wiping her hands on her apron and glancing down at him with a grin on her face.  
“Had enough?” she asked him.  
“I feel like a turkey,” he admitted, lifting the hem of his shirt a bit before putting his hands behind his head. “A big fat turkey at Christmas time.”  
“I called Jason, too, by the way,” she told him and he blinked several times at her in surprise.  
“You have Jason's number?”  
“He's up at the house, I mean,” she corrected.  
“Oh, I see.”  
“And apparently James and Kirk are up there, too. And Dave's on his way down from the outside of Mia's house.”  
He gaped at her at that.  
“Oh, my God, really?” he asked her, and she nodded her head with a grim expression on her face.  
“Apparently he's been sleeping in his car near her house,” she confessed. “I guess he doesn't have anywhere to go.”  
“Other than—protect us…” His voice trailed off.  
“Oh! There's Mikayla and Olivia!”  
Lars tilted his head back to look across the grass upside down and merely saw the tree behind him. He lifted himself up onto his elbows again and, careful not to hurt his stomach, he turned onto his side a bit to see the two women walking a brisk pace across the grass from a rental car near the curb: Mikayla carried a bright red parasol while Olivia wore mirrored sunglasses much like the ones Lars had in his pocket and held a clipboard in one arm to her chest. Sirens wailed off in the distance and he knew help was on the way. Meanwhile, he had no idea where Wayne had run off to from there in the heart of the bustling park, given his size and his girth.  
“What on Earth happened?” Mikayla demanded at the sight of Lars laying on the grass.  
“Mom!” Marcia called out from the back of Smell the Magic's tent and Mikayla blew her a kiss.  
“I ate my heart out, that's what happened,” he replied, stifling a burp inside of his throat. Mia returned to the spot under the tree with a small paper cup of water for him; he reached out for it and swallowed it down in two gulps.  
“Ooh, that's better,” he sighed.  
“Come on, Mia, it's almost show time,” Sandra told her.  
“Break a leg, ladies!” he called after them as they headed back to their tent. He held the cup to his chest while Olivia and Mikayla stood over him.  
“By the way,” the former started, “did you—get rid of—”  
“I did, yes. Well, not technically me, but I did have it disposed of.”  
“Good. Because if he's going to use my daughter to get dirt on her best friend, he's barking up the wrong tree. By the way, is he around here?”  
“I have no idea where he ran off to,” he confessed, “it is as if I won the eating—” He stifled another burp in his throat and brought his free hand up to his mouth to pardon himself. “—mmm, pardon me—the eating contest and he boogied out of here faster than I could say jeg har komplet maskine ud af min mave.”  
“Come again?” asked Mikayla, a smirk crossing her face.  
“Ehhhh, you do not want to know.” He groaned inside of his throat again as he lifted himself into an upright position there on the grass, but he kept himself reclined back on his one hand. He set the empty cup on the grass next to him, bent his knees once again, and then he extended his free hand for either Mikayla or Olivia to help him up. Both women held onto his hand and pulled him up onto his feet.  
Lars staggered forward, holding onto his belly with his free hand, but he caught his balance and burped inside of his throat once again. Olivia stooped down to pick up his paper cup.  
“Oh, thank you,” he said to her.  
“I say we walk around,” Mikayla suggested, putting her arm around him. “You know—take the pressure off of your stomach and keep you mobile.”  
“Good idea,” he answered, running a hand through the hair on the side of his head.  
The three of them strode towards the rows of tents, representing all of the bakeries from up and down the west coast of the United States. The whole part of the park began to smell warm and delicious, but Lars felt no need to eat any of the delectable treats coming into fruition. He thought about his car and where Will was taking it right at the moment. He wondered where that old man could have drive off to at the moment because Jen had drowned in the Willamette River and his son was nowhere to be found. He started to worry about the car given all of his important papers were in the glove compartment. But out of the two things, he wanted his tennis racket back more than anything. He competed for Mia and for his tennis racket; the sirens came closer and closer to Lake Merced and he heard Sonia say something from behind the tents.  
When they reached the tent for Smell the Magic, they saw Mia and Marcia hard at work with the dough for the donuts and the bases for the danishes. The police siren pulled up to the park right as they both glanced up at the two women and the little Danish man walking towards them.  
“There he is!” Marcia declared. He lay a hand to his belly and moved it in a circle.  
“Here I am, still full,” he stated.  
“So very full,” Mia added with a playful grin upon her face. She turned to Marcia, who began folding the dough for the danishes with two hands. “Doesn't my boyfriend get just too cute for words when his tummy gets real full like this, Marcia?”  
“Oh, he gets—about as cute as his belly button,” she pointed out; he glanced down to see the bottom hem of his shirt still rode up his body and clung to the front of the fabric. He felt his face grow warm as he tugged the hem down to cover up his waist, and Mia and Marcia giggled in response to him.  
“I just want to like—poke his belly, and make him jump,” the latter added.  
“I like to massage his belly,” Mia told her, “oooh, he loves that. That gets him hot, actually.”  
“Mia!” he gasped.  
“What? It's just girl talk. We talk about our boys—I am sure you boys like to talk about us if and when you get the chance.” She flashed him another wink.  
“Oh!” Marcia caught herself. “And we're making kringle, by the way.”  
“Mmmmm—kringle,” he remarked. “So heavenly, and so like home.”  
“We'll let you ladies get back to work,” Mikayla told them with a wink. Olivia, meanwhile, walked ahead to give a brief interview of all of the bakers in each and every tent. The smell of breads and pastries combined with the warmth of the summer afternoon and the softness of the lake within range of there; and the whole mood cradled Lars so much that he wanted to lay back down on the grass and take a nap. And for a second, he had forgotten about his car and his racket that is until Sandra, who returned to the tent with another cookie sheet and a roll of wax paper for the kringle, broke him out of his trance.  
“Are you listening?” she asked him.  
“Lars!” Sonia called out from the end of the tents.  
“Oh, there's my other daughter,” Mikayla pointed out; she hurried up to them with a concerned look on her face.  
“You're not going to believe this,” she began, breathless.  
“What's that?” he asked her as Mikayla let go of him.  
“I just spoke to the cops—their eyes in the sky found your car going north of Ukiah. They think he's heading up to Eureka. Eureka!”  
“He's going all the way up to Eureka!” he declared, turning to Mia.  
“Already?” She was stunned.  
“Yes!”  
They eyed one another and he raised an eyebrow at her.  
“He's probably going back to Portland,” Marcia concluded. Lars recalled the warehouse in the woods.  
“Looks like we're going to have to make a road trip,” Mia suggested once she put the donuts in the oven.  
“Looks like it,” he agreed with her. He remembered Dave was driving down from Portland, and for all he knew, he almost reached the state line at that point, that is if he had fuel with him. “We have gone that way, too. But this time around, we have more people behind us on it.”


	133. Chapter 133

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All over the country, I'm seeing it the same,  
> nobody's winning at this kind of game.  
> We gotta do better, it's time to begin,  
> you know all the answers must come from within.”  
> -”Free Ride”, Edgar Winter

The otherwise quick build up within the competition seemed to drag on for Lars, given all of the judges had to taste every piece of pastry that came out of those ovens and had no other means of chasing down Will Davidson. He had to put his faith in the police, but at the same time, he worried about them not capturing him, or the thought of Will going all the way up the coast line until the car ran out of fuel, and then what? What else would that man do to his car besides break another window or the windshield? No one had any idea where Wayne had run off to, either, which brought up even more questions.  
The sun began to hang low over the lake and the ocean and Lars started to worry given no one had heard another word from the police about the whereabouts of his car anywhere around Ukiah.  
He sat at the picnic table with Olivia, Mikayla, and Sonia, and another cup full of water to rid of the odd after taste in the back of his mouth. He kept the button on his jeans unfastened to ease the pressure on his waist and that full feeling inside of his stomach.  
“It all looks and smells so good,” Sonia noted.  
“I know, right?” Mikayla joined in; Lars turned around in time to the sight of Marcia wiping down the sides of a platter holding those raspberry danishes there on their display table. Mia stepped forward with another platter, one beholding those bright red Puerto Rican donuts. Even though his stomach was stuffed full and he knew he had to bide his time in order for the pressure let off of his whole belly, Lars eyed those donuts as if she had made them for him. He wanted their full, voluptuous flavor to kiss his tongue and caress over his lips again. He pictured himself walking up there and taking two for himself, and yet all he could do at that moment was sit on the bench and keep one hand underneath his shirt to touch his taut skin.  
He glanced across the table at Sonia, and the shadows dancing over her face, and the ringlets all around her head. She had a distant expression on her face and he knew she, too, thought about the old man and the car; he eyed the skin on her chest and flashed back to when they were together at her house. He still wanted to know what she did to him to leave those aches and pains all over his body. Perhaps she was afraid and she wanted him to know in the best way possible, or perhaps she did like it rough like how she told him.  
She peered over at him and showed him a little smirk when a piece of sunlight shone through a break in the leaves of one of the trees behind them, and onto his left eye, thus highlighting the scar underneath his eyebrow. She raised an eyebrow at him before she shook her head at him. He had no idea what she meant by that but nonetheless he took it in stride.  
He returned to the tents behind them as Mia put out a platter of a half dozen kringles on the table next to the donuts. He could not see their tops given the distance away, but he could taste their warmth and the flakiness of the puff pastry. He thought about the marzipan filling she had promised when they attempted to make it together back at Smell the Magic; she and Marcia backed away from the table and he knew it was judging time.  
Lars climbed to his feet and ambled across the grass to meet up with the two of them behind the tent. He rounded the tent there at the end in time to see Mia lifting the back flap. He strode up to her with his hand at the base of his chest and then, when she wheeled around to look at him, he massaged both of his hands all over his belly. She giggled at him and then Marcia poked her head out from inside of the tent.  
“What's up—” She turned to look at Lars with her eyebrow raised. “Oh, hey, it's the man with the iron stomach!”  
“I assume it is judging time,” he declared, slipping the pads of his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans over his hips.  
“Indeed it is, big boy,” Marcia retorted, and then her expression turned serious. “By the way, did you guys hear anything back from the cops? Aside from the car going into Nor Cal?”  
“We haven't,” he confessed, “I am starting to get worried, too.”  
“I'm sure they will catch him—” Mia was cut off by something. Lars took a glimpse behind him and recognized the pick up truck bounding into the parking lot across the grass. He recognized the other person in the seat next to him.  
“Hey, it's Layne and Jerry!” he declared as they parked, facing the opposite direction at the curb before the grass. Jerry climbed out of the driver's seat wearing a snug waist coat despite of the warmth of the day while Layne had on a plain white T-shirt and wore his hair in a ponytail behind his head. The back doors opened up and a bearded man and an Asian man with shoulder length black hair climbed out onto the grass.  
“And Kim and Hiro!” Mia added.  
“There you are!” Jerry called out to Lars, and the four men jogged across the grass to meet up with the three of them.  
“Do you know what happened to your car?” he asked once they came within earshot.  
“It got stolen, that is what happened,” Lars answered, scorn.  
“The bastard took it all the way up to Fort Bragg,” Kim declared; Lars gaped at him.  
“He went all the way to Fort Bragg?!”  
“Yeah, we saw your car on the way down from Eureka,” Hiro explained, “and Layne and I both noticed the driver side window was broken. So we followed him up into the hills and before he reached Fort Bragg, he ran out of gas and pulled over. We drove past so it looked like we weren't following him but then we posted up around a corner. We watched him get out and into another car and drive off.”  
Lars turned around to look at Mia and Marcia gaping at one another.  
“He was going pretty fast, too,” Layne added.  
“He was running from the cops,” Mia pointed out, “so he went out to the middle of nowhere.”  
“Okay,” Lars concluded, returning his hands to his hips and fetching up a sigh, “so at least we know what happened to my car, which means we are indeed going to have to make a road trip as soon as we are done here. I sincerely hope he did not take my racket with him.”  
“Okay, I'll go tell Mom, Liv, and Sonia what happened,” Marcia offered, hurrying around Lars and Mia to the picnic table.  
“How are we going to get up there, though?” asked Mia.  
“Take their truck, perhaps?” Lars suggested.  
“That's actually Mark's truck,” Jerry pointed out. “He's letting Layne and me borrow it because mine blew out a gasket. And when we got word that you were participating in an eating contest in conjunction with your girlfriend's baking show, we needed to get our asses down here. These two came with because they needed to pick up some equipment up in San Fran.”  
“And?” Lars followed along.  
“There's barely enough room for the four of us,” Kim answered with a solemn look upon his face.  
“Oh, fuck,” he groaned. “But I need my car! He took my racket, too.”  
“Lars!” Olivia called out from the picnic table. Lars turned around to see her gesturing for him to come closer. He turned back to Mia, who nodded for him to talk to her. He sighed though his nose and ambled across the grass to meet up with her.  
“You need a ride up to Fort Bragg?” she asked him once he stood before her.  
“To fetch my car, yes.”  
“Mike and I'll drive you up there to get it. We've got the rental.”  
“But it's a rental, though,” he pointed out.  
“Yeah, we know,” Mikayla assured him.  
“I've got money—I'll pay the late fees,” Olivia assured him. “You know, the other night, Nirvana played a concert with their drummer—you know, Aaron?”  
“Yes.”  
“Ashley told me that Kurt and Krist both said if anyone in the audience is a racist, a homophobe, a sexist, or anything deemed hateful, they should get out. Kurt later told her that it was because of what happened to you and Mia at the Mother Love Bone show and in Pike Place respectively.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. So, I will take you kids up to Fort Bragg. And Mike will ride with us. It'll be dark by the time we get there, but we will get there.”  
“Yeah, don't worry about it, little man,” Mikayla joined in. “We will get your car and your racket back.”  
But right as the words left her lips, she gazed on at the rows of tents; Lars turned around again to see the three judges making their way to the final bakery for a tasting and a final round of notes before scoring.  
“It's about to get real,” Sonia proclaimed.  
“It's about to get very real,” Lars said under his breath. If Smell the Magic won this, they would inject more money into their new shops in Seattle and in Oakland. He could walk into the one near his house and have a taste of Mia's Puerto Rican donuts without having to make the six hundred mile trip up to Portland. Everyone in the park remained silent as the judges tallied up and gathered their notes together for a final conclusion: the sole noise came from the lake nearby and the breeze rustling the leaves in the trees. One of the judges, an older woman with a short bob of silver hair turned to everyone in the tents: Lars watched Mia, Marcia, and Sandra step out from the front of their tent to hear the verdict.  
“Alright, everyone, we have the winners,” she started, her voice echoing over the grass so that, even though they stood about thirty feet away, the four of them at the picnic table could hear her; “it was difficult but we have decided that Sweet Pea is this year's first place winner—” His heart sank at the sight of Mia and Marcia gaping at one another. “—second place goes to Cold Crème, and third—”  
Lars steadied himself on Olivia's shoulder.  
“—third place goes to Madame X.”  
Mia knitted her eyebrows and bowed her head. Marcia clasped a hand to her shoulder before bringing her into her chest for an embrace.  
“No,” Lars said aloud, “no. No! Smell the Magic should have won!”  
“If not, get second or third place!” Sonia added.  
“Right? But what does this mean now?”  
“One of their new shops isn't going to open,” Olivia told him, “probably the ones down here in California because they're so far away from Portland whereas the one in Ballard is a day trip away. That's my guess, but it seems logical, though.” She sighed as Lars' vision of having donuts nearby shattered apart right before his eyes.  
“Anyways, let's help them clean up and round up the girls and we'll pile into the rental—” The three of them stood up from the picnic table as the shadows lining the trees began to stretch across the grass and the surface of the lake. No sooner had they approached the tent for Smell the Magic to help Mia, Marcia, and Sandra gather their things, and lifted the back flap of the tent when a black truck with a camper shell over the bed skidded into the parking lot and towards the very end of the row of cars before flipping a turn. Lars recognized the wavy red curls of hair on the driver's head, even with his black sunglasses on over his face.  
“It's Dave!” he declared, his voice breaking. “It's Dave! Dave!”  
The truck skidded to a stop in front of the truck Jerry, Layne, Kim, and Hiro rode in on; still keeping his pants unbuttoned, Lars sprinted across the grass to meet up with Dave right as he reached across the seats to open the passenger door.  
“Get in! Get in! Get in the truck! I'm taking you to your car!” he shouted; Lars turned around for Mia, Marcia, and Sonia to join them, but when the three of them made their way across the grass to the idling truck, Sonia stopped them.  
“Wait a minute, I thought we were taking Olivia's rental,” she pointed out.  
“She's not taking an airport rental out of this place, Sonia!” Dave declared. The four of them peered across the grass at Olivia, Mikayla, Jerry, Layne, Kim, and Hiro all staring on at them.  
“You guys go ahead, we'll help Sandra pick up,” Jerry assured them. “We'll catch up with you later.”  
“Are you sure?” asked Mia.  
“Yes!” Mikayla called after them. “Go get Lars' car! That's way more important.”  
“But Mom, it's our bakery!” Marcia insisted.  
“Get in that truck, or you and your sister are both grounded—and I frankly don't care if you both are renting a place together now. I will still ground the both of you even when you're a billionaire baker and Sonia's the next Mae West. Now, get in that truck.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Alright, so I saw the car drive up this road here.”  
Night had fallen over Northern California as Dave drove Mia in the front seat and Marcia, Lars, and Sonia in the back seat up the highway towards the mountain pass leading them to Fort Bragg on the coast. All any one of them could see for miles on end on either side of the highway were bushels of high pine trees stretching up into the dark sky. At some point, the pines morphed into redwood trees surrounded by low, lush bright green shrubs. They had not passed a single pay phone since they left Willits, the cut off point before the pass.  
Dave peered into the rear view mirror to look at Lars.  
“Did Jerry say where the car ran out of gas?”  
“No, he just said near Fort Bragg, like over the pass here.”  
“Alright, so when we find it, stay near it and I'll run down there to fetch some fuel.” He turned his head to look through the window behind their heads, even though darkness obscured his view into the bed. “That is if Jerry and company aren't behind us on it already.”  
“I still think Mom and Liv could've taken their car up with us,” Marcia grumbled as they reached a rather high part of the road: on the right loomed a high stone cliff, while on the left stood the points of redwood trees and a ravine.  
“That would've been tight as all hell, though, Marsh,” Mia pointed out, “all of us being in that little car until we reached the other side.”  
“And besides, I was not going to let you guys take that rental all the way up,” Dave pointed out, turning his head towards the back seat once again, “apologies to Olivia and Mikayla, but no.”  
He peered back at her long enough to pay less attention to the stretch of road leveling out into the trees. “No fucking way, no fucking how.”  
“Hey, man, watch the road,” Lars warned.  
“Paying those fees is the last thing any of you have to do right now,” he continued.  
“WATCH THE ROAD!”  
“LOOK OUT!” Sonia screeched. Dave turned back around to the sight of the trunk of a redwood tree emerging out of the darkness to his front fender, and he swerved to the left. The car veered off of the other side of the road into the bushes. He slammed on the brakes before they hit a tree: Lars' seat belt tightened up from the sudden stop and he held out either of his arms onto both Marcia and Sonia's chests to keep them from flying forward. Mia sank down in her seat and braced herself for impact. But the car never went any further: the headlights shone over the trunk of the redwood looming before them and glowed back onto their faces.  
“Everyone alright?” Dave squeaked out.  
“Yeah,” Lars gasped and then breathed a sigh of relief.  
“That was totally my fault—forgive me for that.”  
“You can let go of us now, Lars,” said Marcia. He moved his arms forward and lay his hands in between his thighs.  
“Well, at least we didn't hit anything,” Dave remarked, shifting the truck into reverse.  
“Or drive off of the cliff,” Lars added.  
“Or drive off the cliff, right!” He cleared his throat. “Can one of you ladies do me a favor and guide me out of here? I'm afraid of hitting one of these trees.”  
“I'll do it,” Marcia offered, unbuckling her seat belt.  
“There's a flashlight under the seat,” Dave told her. “Grab that and guide me back so I can see you.” In the dim light, Lars watched her reach down in between her legs for the flashlight in question before climbing out into the dark woods. She shut the door behind her and clicked on the light, a bright white halogen light with a harsh after glow on the dirt around the truck. They paused for a moment, and then—  
“The car!” she yelled out from the road.  
“The car?” Mia echoed.  
“The car! My car!” Lars exclaimed, peering behind him into the camper shell.  
“The car is right up here!” Marcia yelled out again.  
“Which means we're not too far from the coast,” Dave concluded, “and I kind of know the answer to this, too, but any of you guys hungry?”  
“Yes,” Lars said without hesitation. “I may have eaten a shitload of cake and pie but yes, I am hungry again.”


	134. Chapter 134

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Put a bend in the road.  
> I'm too lost and tired  
> to see where I'm going,  
> what I left behind,  
> and I'm moving  
> so slow...”  
> -”Bend in the Road”, Chris Cornell

A soft dew fell upon Lars and Mia's heads as they hurried towards his car near a bend in the road. They were only ones on the whole highway and since Marcia had not ridden around with him, for a bit he wondered if it was even his car. Indeed, using the halogen flashlight courtesy of Marcia and Dave, both of whom, along with Sonia drove down the hill to Fort Bragg for fuel and food, they recognized the Deep Purple and Heart and Soul: Copenhagen stickers in the back window.  
“Really hope he did not take anything,” he wondered aloud; beyond the trees and the bend in the road, he spotted a sliver of blackness on the horizon and he knew they were near the ocean. To think Will and Wayne were right there near Fort Bragg.  
“Was there anything important in there?” she asked him as she shone the light into the back window.  
“Oh, just some things in the glove box…” His voice trailed off. They rounded the driver's side of the car to check the damage and the gaping dark hole in lieu of the window. Small pieces of plexiglas stuck to the bottom of the window and beheld the inside of the car which, from as far as they could tell, had been left untouched. Mia shone the light into the back seat for the sight of anything, and then she doubled back to the trunk.  
“Do you have your keys?” she asked him.  
“In my pocket,” he replied, standing there with his hand on the door handle. “I am positive it is unlocked, though.”  
In the back glow from the flashlight, he noticed the look of intent on her face, and then she snickered at him.  
“You just want me to put my hand into your pocket,” she taunted him as she shone the light onto the trunk of the car. He shrugged and shuffled his right foot about on the pavement; he noticed the growing grin on her face.  
“Mind you, I never said—”  
“Oh, but I know your intention, though,” she retorted, returning to him. She stood before his face with the flashlight pointed down to the ground; she held her body close to him so her breasts touched his chest.  
“Hey, guess what,” he began in a low voice.  
“What?”  
“I never buttoned my pants since we left Lake Merced.”  
“Lars—it's almost nine o'clock at night,” she stated, never changing her expression. “I just lost a big baking competition. We just found your car with a broken window in the middle of nowhere. We almost drove into a centuries old tree and then almost fell of a cliff. Dave, Marcia, and Sonia are right behind us. Jerry, Layne, and all of them are coming up from down the road. Not to mention—”  
She lay her free hand on his belly.  
“You talk about feeling hungry again… and yet you have eaten enough cake and pie to satisfy ten people. I think you just want to come onto me again.”  
“And that is an issue?”  
She shrugged again.  
“Depending on who you ask,” she confessed. She moved her hand about in a small circle. “You're warm.”  
“Of course I am. And you are very soft, darling.” He flashed her a wink.  
“Would you believe it has been nearly a year since you and I met one another,” she remarked.  
“Crazy, right?”  
She lifted her free hand to touched the smooth skin on the side of his face.  
“Still as full and beautiful as the day I saw you. Fuller, actually—fuller, softer, far more sensual, and even sweeter than ever.”  
“I do try my best after all, darling.” She leaned in for a kiss on his lips: her skin was soft and silky against his lips.  
“You saved me,” she whispered into his face; in the dim light of the after glow, he could see her scanning his face with those deep soulful eyes. He could feel it in between the two of them, more so than ever. She opened herself wide open right then so as to let him in.  
“And you gave me a reason,” he whispered back to her. “And you uncovered that part of me that I never knew existed—” His breath shook as she gave him another kiss and put her arm around his waist. He set his hands on her lower back.  
“Speaking of trunks,” she continued, “you've got a little more junk in yours.”  
“I have always had junk in mine,” he teased her. “Literally—be careful opening that trunk when you do because there might be something in there.”  
She was about to kiss him again when a pair of square headlights behind her caught his attention.  
“What the hell?” she asked, moving away from his lips and turning around to face the lights.  
“That's probably Jerry,” he answered.  
The truck bounded onto the side of the road behind them; behind them came a smaller car with rounder, more oval headlights.  
“And I assume that's Olivia and Mikayla behind them?” he wondered aloud.  
“I think you are right,” she noted, returning to his face for another kiss and a gentle stroke of his waist.  
“More later on for you and me both, baby boy,” she whispered to him, puckering her lips right before him.  
“I am patient, min skat,” he replied with another wink.  
“Alright, love birds, what's going on out here,” Jerry called out.  
“The window is broken,” said Lars in a frank tone: he tugged down on the bottom hem of his shirt to hide his unbuttoned jeans.  
“Well, obviously,” Mia retorted with a slight chuckle. “But what about the trunk, though?”  
Then he recalled what she had searched for back there. “My racket!” he declared.  
Jerry and Layne gathered on either side of her as she pressed the button on the handle and lifted the trunk lid. They stared at the interior for not even ten seconds before coming to a conclusion.  
“Empty,” Layne declared.  
“Empty!” Lars echoed. “What about the back seat?”  
“I didn't find anything back there,” Mia replied, closing the lid with a grim look upon her face. Two car doors behind them closed and Olivia and Mikayla jogged up around either side of the truck to meet up with them.  
“Well, we found the car but the racket's not here,” Jerry told them.  
“Oh, Jesus,” Olivia groaned.  
“Wait, where's Dave and my daughters?” Mikayla asked, peering about the darkness.  
“They went down the hill to get things to eat and to get gas,” replied Mia. “They should be back at like any minute right now.”  
“So where do you guys think they went?” asked Kim, giving his hair a slight toss before putting his hands on his hips. “The old man and the other guy, I mean?”  
“Portland,” Lars and Mia said in unison.  
“Why Portland?”  
“Out of state and they live up there,” Olivia clarified.  
“I hope they've got gas, too,” said Jerry.  
“They have that warehouse up there,” Lars pointed out. “Remember that place? The building in the woods, near the river?”  
Jerry hesitated for a moment, and then he raised his eyebrows in response.  
“Oh! That place! The place where the old man freaked out the both of us.” He knitted his eyebrows in response to that. “Wait a minute, that's who we're going after?”  
“Yeah. That old man who mad dogged the two of us outside of the warehouse is the same guy who broke my window, stole my car and abandoned it on the side of the road with no fuel on board, and to top it off, took my bloody tennis racket.”  
“He used to be my father in law,” Mia added.  
“Yeah, the other guy used to be her husband,” Lars continued, “and he wants to kill me. Literally.”  
“Wayne wants to kill you?” Mikayla gaped at him.  
“He told her,” he nodded at Mia, “that if he even so much as smells me on her again, he will bury the two of us.”  
“Wait,” Mikayla stopped him. “What do you mean 'if he even so much as smells you'?”  
Lars took a glimpse over at Mia.  
“I thought you told them about us,” he told her in a hushed voice.  
“I did,” she answered. “Trust me, I did, and I was expecting the two of them to ostracize me the same way my parents did. But I didn't tell them that, though.”  
“Tell them—what?” She sighed and closed her eyes.  
“That we met in the bakery,” she said, “that, and the fact I had a hunch Wayne wanted to know what was going on with me because I always came home smelling of pastries, even on the days I worked a shift at the salon—”  
“Wait a minute,” Lars interrupted, tugging down on the bottom hem of his shirt once again, “you knew what he wanted to do?”  
“No,” she corrected him. “The whole entire time you and I were together, I had this lingering fear that—he would find out what I was doing. He used to be a journalist, after all.”  
“Yeah, and he got his ass fired because he couldn't keep his it in his pants,” Olivia grumbled.  
“Hence, you lied to protect me,” he followed along. “But that still does not answer why—why he said that—”  
“I don't eat my own donuts,” Mia explained in a calm tone.  
“You don't eat your own donuts,” he repeated, flashing them a baffled glance.  
“No,” she said, “I don't eat my donuts because I don't need to eat them. The first few times I made them I tasted them and then ran away with the recipe thereafter. I know 'taste everything you make', but I trust myself on that recipe because I've done it enough. And they are the sole reason I have a bottle of tequila in my house. So whenever I came the house after you and I were together, I always smell like baked goods—”  
“And—tequila,” Lars sputtered out. “And so he put two and two together when he and Angela went snooping around—” He then turned to Olivia. “By the way, why did he ask you for a copy of Ashley's manuscript?”  
She swallowed and shifted her weight. She opened her mouth to speak but she was cut off by another pair of headlights coming around the bend in front of them. They slowed down as they approached the front of his car; Lars and Mia both turned around at the sight of Dave's truck rolling up to the shoulder along the edge of the road. He pulled the parking brake about a foot from the front fender, and then put out the lights.  
Marcia climbed out of the front cab of the truck with a sandwich wrapped in cellophane in one hand and a bag of something in the other; Sonia followed with a black roll tucked underneath her arm.  
“There they are!” Mikayla declared; Marcia tossed Lars the bag and he caught it in both hands before it landed on the ground.  
“Sun Chips! My favorite!”  
“Sonia and I also got you a sandwich,” she added when she came within earshot. She handed him the sandwich, a pair of pieces of wheat bread with mayonnaise and mustard, lettuce, spinach, Muenster cheese, turkey, and—  
“Pastrami,” he breathed out, taking a whiff of the sandwich before taking a bite.  
“Hey, Kim, come here!” Dave called from the driver's side door and Kim jogged towards him.  
“We shopped around for a couple of gas cans,” Sonia explained, unfurling the roll under her arm, “and a plastic tarp and some duct tape to cover up the window.”  
“It's long trip up the coast line after all,” Dave warned as he and Kim lugged the gas cans to the mouth of the fuel tank. Jerry and Layne assisted them in pouring it all in.  
“Lars and I have done it, though,” Mia pointed out. “Just the two of us.”  
“Really?” asked Hiro.  
“Yeah. We can totally do it again, too.”  
“Just so long as I don't pop a button again,” Lars replied with his mouth full of sandwich. Hiro assisted Marcia and Sonia on taping the tarp on over the window. Meanwhile, Mia and Mikayla talked about something in a low voice, and then Lars turned to Olivia once he swallowed his second bite of sandwich.  
“By the way,” he began in a low voice, “you didn't answer my question. Why did you even let him have a copy in the first place? Given it's kept under lock and key and everything.”  
She fetched up a sigh before answering.  
“He threatened to assault me and my daughter if I didn't comply,” she confessed in a low voice. “You know, he left those gross messages on mine and Xana La Fuente's answering machines, and then later on, he told me he needed a copy of that to get dirt on Mia and set you up. But she already told me about the two of you and I already liked you, so I knew what he was doing. But that's why he's been after you—to make you look like the scoundrel and the pig and in turn painting himself the bigger man and the hero. He also planned on doing something to Angela and Ben Shepherd to cover up the affair there.”  
“Probably to keep them quiet,” he followed along.  
“Chris, Kim, Matt, and Hiro, too,” she added.  
“Because she slept with all of them, too.”  
“Right! Since he pounded on the wrong guy—Chad Channing, who looks like you in a way—he's going to do something drastic to make it seem like none of this happened. And since he's going back to Portland, that's a start of something.”  
“Which means we'd better get on the road soon.” He flashed back on the sign high up in the trees on either side of the warehouse driveway: “Arbeit Macht Frei”, and then, like a stroke of brilliance, he remembered what it translated to given Danish's closeness to German: “work sets one free.” Mia's husband was using that as a motive to rid of any trace of Lars on Earth. Feeling the butterflies rise up in his stomach again, he stuck the sandwich into his mouth so he could open the bag of Sun Chips. He then took out the sandwich and held out the bag to her. “Chip?”  
“Ooh, yes please.” She took two out of the bag when Dave spoke again.  
“Okay, so that'll be enough to get Lars and Mia up to Eureka, maybe the state line. Since you guys know the way better than we do, Marcia, Sonia, and I will follow you up, and then the four of them can follow.”  
“What about Mom and Liv?” asked Sonia, stretching the fourth and final strip of duct tape over the outside edge of the window.  
“You guys go ahead,” Olivia told her, “we need to take the car back, and we'll be flying up to Portland to meet up with all of you.”  
“I'm glad Lars is eating, too,” Jerry noted.  
“I shall drive all night if I must,” said Lars as he took another bite of sandwich.


	135. Chapter 135

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole chapter was written with Hangar 18 on loop, I'm not even exaggerating

The car started up again, albeit a bit roughly given its running out of fuel had kicked up some sediment at the bottom of the fuel tank, however once Lars and Mia climbed into the front seats together with their things, he led the convoy forward into the darkness and towards the ocean. The distance did not stand a chance with him. He thought about the eating contest and his preparing for it, but he also thought about all of the shows he had played on a full stomach, how the very action of it did nothing to slow him down. He had faith he could do it, except this time around he had his heart guiding him back home to Portland.  
Sonia, Marcia, and Hiro had stretched the tarp taut over the gaping hole of the former place of the driver's side window, but no matter how slow and smooth Lars drove the car, it still rattled and rustled about in his ear, and he could scarcely peek into his side mirror at the sight of the cars following him in single file line up the coast. He began to think about James, Kirk, and Jason, and if they knew about what was happening with him and all of them. Near the same place Lars and Mia had broken down before on the night of his birthday, he eyed the fuel gauge once again. This time around, however, the summer wind rattled his windows, his stomach continued to bulge full out from his body, and Mia had fallen asleep after they merged back onto the Pacific Coast Highway.  
The headlights behind his rear fender shone in his mirrors all the way up into Humboldt County. Those tall trees with thick stumps loomed over either side of the road. The darkness of the sky overhead brought yawn after yawn to him. A few times he fluttered his eyelids several times so as to keep them open.  
Every so often, he eyed the clock on the dashboard and then returned to the road. The pavement seemed to stretch on into the darkness for all eternity.  
Several times, he peered up into the rear view mirror to see Dave's truck behind him with Jerry driving Mark's truck bringing up the rear, and several times it dawned on him that they were the only cars on the road all the way up to the same canyon he and Mia had visited back in December.  
The pavement made a few twists and turns here and there but he never paid full attention given the first time up the road, he had the passenger seat reclined back so he could relax and she gave him belly rubs as a result. And yet he never recalled there being this many long stretches of straight dark pavement in front of the car. The redwood trees grew monotonous and the shrubs all looked the same, and he regretted staying down in the passenger seat for so long on the first trip because he would have been more than happy to make that request to her if and when the opportunity arose.  
He eyed the clock again. It was getting so late and the full feeling inside of his stomach started to weigh him down into the pit of the driver's seat. He peered over at Mia, who reclined in the seat herself and closed her eyes miles ago.  
He blinked a few times, each time with emphasis so as to keep his eyes open. How he wanted a cup of tea or a cup of coffee right then to keep him going, and he wished he had made that request when Dave and the Bennett sisters left for Fort Bragg. A nice, warm cup of black tea with just a kiss of sugar for his tummy, and caffeine for his brain and his heart. Or a nice, silky cup of coffee with cream and sugar. The very thought of either one made his eyelids feel even heavier: at one point, it felt as though he had gone swimming in the ocean and returned with a bit of sand in his eyes.  
He rubbed his eyes with his left hand and blinked again and again. He shifted his weight forward in his seat, leaning over the steering wheel to take the pressure off of his waist and his lower back, but that could not suffice. Indeed, at one point, during a rather long stretch of road, he peered over at Mia once again before returning his attention to the road when felt his eyelids close. His head bowed forward.  
He dozed off and he had no idea for how long, but she was on his mind. He wished he had said something during that first trip when at one point, he hit his forehead against the horn in the middle of the steering wheel. But the blare of the horn didn't wake him: Mia's voice awoke him.  
“Lars! LARS!”  
“Huh? Wha?” He lifted his head and returned his attention to the road before they reached a gentle left turn.  
“Pull over, let me drive,” she offered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.  
“No,” he insisted.  
“No? No! Lars, you are obviously exhausted. Let me drive.”  
“No, no, no,” he said, stubborn. “I must not let them win.”  
“You already won, though,” she pointed out.  
“Mia, Olivia told me your husband is going to do something drastic when they get back to Portland. Something drastic to us to make sure none of anything that happened actually happened.”  
“Wait, what do you mean?”  
“He took the manuscript to not only get dirt on you but to set me up,” he explained, “that's why he went after me and was willing to beat me to a bloody pulp. He was trying to make me look like the filthy rotten scoundrel and him the hero.”  
She gasped at that.  
“Of course!” she declared. “It all makes sense now!”  
“Yeah, he is going to do something to Angela, too, so figure I do not want to let him win,” he told her; he dared not tell her about his incident with Angela in New Orleans and that was a promise he had made for himself.  
“Pull over,” she commanded again.  
“Why? Mia, I'm awake now.”  
“No, it's not that.”  
“Well, why do you want me to pull over and interrupt things?”  
“Because,” she started, reluctant, nibbling on her bottom lip, “—if anyone is going to take that abusive piece of shit down, it is going to be me.”  
He nibbled on his bottom lip before he leaned back in his seat.  
“Besides, I think we all could use a break right about now,” she added. “It's after twelve and Dave has been driving for a long time, too.”  
“That man is tougher and harder than diamonds—just listen to some of Megadeth's music if you don't know what I am talking about—but that is a good idea, though.”  
“Jerry's been driving a long time, too—”  
But as soon as the words left her lips, he slowed down before he pulled over onto the dirt covered shoulder of the road. He slowed to a stop right as Dave and Jerry pulled over right behind them. Lars climbed out of the front seat into the cool, oceanic night and rounded the front fender of the car, his boots crunching over the dirt and rocks with every step of the way. Mia climbed out and followed suit into the driver's seat; through the glare of the headlights, he noticed Dave climbing out to let Marcia drive, and Jerry climbing out to let Hiro have a go at driving.  
Once Lars had closed the door, he breathed a sigh of relief as he ran his fingers through his hair. He rubbed his chin before buckling into the seat.  
“Shall I grow a beard?” he asked her. “One for real this time?”  
“Por favor,” she replied, adjusting the seat and the rear view mirror a bit, “I mean—behage.”  
“You are doing well, my sweet,” he told her with a wink.  
They pulled forward into the blackness for the final several miles to Eureka, over the bridge where they broke down before, and around the twists and turns of the road, before they bounded into the gas station they had stopped at before. She bought the both of them cups of coffee to keep them awake for the next three hundred miles.  
“We'll probably get up there by breakfast,” he overheard Mia tell Dave and Hiro. Once they returned to the road once again, and once they crossed the bridge, the tarp developed a rattle from the gaps in the duct tape, Lars could feel himself dozing off once again in the passenger seat. He started to doze off even with the cup of coffee resting in the center console next to him. He took a sip, and then he took another one granted he didn't burn his tongue that time around. He held the cup in between his knees so he assured himself to staying awake. They wound their way through the forest of redwood trees once again, this time under a heavy canopy of total darkness, the sole light emanating from the three pairs of headlights and the stars penetrating the night sky.  
He kept his eyes open for signs showing the distance to the state line and he knew the coffee was doing its job as the surroundings grew familiar with every passing mile and break in the trees looking out to the blackness covering the ocean. Even sitting there in the passenger seat, it all seemed to stretch on forever. All of the twists and turns around the rocks and the looming cliffs, all of the vegetation, all of the wilderness, all of the nothing. Not to mention, the trip felt much longer this time around than it did back in December.  
At a quarter after one o'clock in the morning, he straightened himself upright in the seat, holding the cup of coffee with both hands, and turned to her.  
“How are you feeling?” he asked her in a broken voice.  
“I'm alright,” she answered, clearing her throat and speaking in a louder voice against the rattle of the tarp covering the window. “This place here looks familiar—we're almost to Crescent City and subsequently the state line.”  
“Oh, that's good.” He took another sip of coffee as they cleared the redwood trees to the sand dunes. The sight of it then struck him as familiar at that point. But then something, something dark and low to the ground, parked on the side of the road caught their eye.  
“That's Wayne's car,” she said aloud.  
“Holy fuck, are you serious?” he asked her, leaning forward for a closer look for himself.  
“Yeah!” She pointed out of the windshield. “Those are Oregon plates!”  
“I recognize the shit paint job now, too!” he added.  
“Either he broke down or he's taking a rest—”  
They drove past the car, and even though they drove too fast, Lars caught a good enough glimpse to see a large man reclined in the driver's seat.  
“That was him!” he exclaimed. “That was him! He was resting for the night!”  
They glanced at one another, both of them with their cups of coffee in hand. It was now a game of cat and mouse between the two of them and him. Lars held up his left hand in between their heads and she clasped onto it with her right hand. They both bowed their heads and speared into the darkness together, two thieves in the night, followed close by their accomplices.  
They reached Crescent City, buttoned up for the night, and the sight of the blackened ocean to their right by a quarter to two in the morning.  
“It's good to be home!” Mia declared when the signs for the Oregon state line entered their view. Lars rolled down the window to let in the cool ocean air and to stick his head out into the night.  
“WOOOO!”  
She burst out laughing at that. But now was the grind up the coast once again, the monolithic cliffs to their left and the gaping abyss of the ocean to their right. Lars kept the window rolled down all the way up so the smell of the salt joined with the caffeine in their veins to keep them awake until they reached Newport up the coast and crossed over into the Willamette Valley.  
Marcia and Hiro's headlights shone out to the blackness behind them every so often from the bends and turns in the road running along the cliffs. The crashing of the tides outside drowned out the whistling from the tarp; to think they were going to beat Wayne at his own game. The very thought of it was more erotic to Lars than the prospect of him and Mia eating a full dinner together and then making love on his mattress. But then he wondered what would happen when they returned to Portland: would he continue to track them down and run after them? Or was there something more sinister waiting for them in Portland, something of which they had not figured out as of yet?  
In fact, as they rolled closer and closer to Newport and the mountain pass, a cold icy feeling emerged in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps it came from the early hours of the morning, but with each mile passing by, the feeling worsened to the point of nausea. Something was terribly wrong, and the cool night air and his own fatigue meant nothing to him at that point. Someone he loved was in trouble, and he itched to know whom of which had suffered and needed help at that moment. On top of this, he had no idea as to how to describe the feeling, other than the fact that it nagged him more than someone poking him in the belly when he was asleep.  
He peered out the windshield at the sight of the upcoming lights of the next town, each one more dim lit than the last one. A sign showed Newport nineteen miles away. He thought about Wayne there on the side of the road back around Crescent City and if he had woken up at that point, and found his way up that very same road, or if he crossed over at any given point before them. For all he knew, that man was already barreling down the spine of Oregon, there on the other side of the cliffs. He peered at the clock on the dashboard again to find the time was almost four o'clock in the morning.  
He finished his coffee, mere tepid sugar and cream at the point in which Newport entered their view. He recognized the bridge connecting the north and south sides of town.  
The two of them peered into the rear view mirror once again to make sure Marcia and Hiro were still right behind them, and then Mia turned onto the highway leading them into the mountains. In the side mirror outside of Lars' window, he could see the sky over the ocean changing color, from that cavernous, inky black to a more richer violet. They would indeed reach Portland by breakfast as they ascended into the dense forest shrouding the mountains lining the western side of the Willamette Valley.  
Even though the coffee kept him awake long enough to witness the Oregon Coast in the dead of night, he started to feel tired once again. He rubbed his eyes with his right hand: that sandy feeling returned and even with his blinking his eyes several times, the feeling persisted. The road wound all the way up to the summit of the mountain pass and, there on the eastern side of the valley stood the series of jagged monoliths pointing high beneath the deep purple sky that was the foreboding Cascade Mountains. Mia guided them down the side of the mountain, through more trees and wilderness, until it finally cleared away to low shrubs and grassland.  
The two pairs of headlights from the two trucks still lurked behind them as they hit the stretch of road leading them into Corvallis. As they came closer and closer, Lars noticed a faint glow of gold and orange beginning to form over the summits of the mountains. A part of him still hoped Wayne was still down by the sand dunes as he checked the time again. Four thirty in the morning.  
The low buildings on the outskirts of Corvallis entered their view and yet, Mia continued on without a single word. The sole noise came from the whistle in the tarp and the roar of the road underneath the car. He thought of offering to drive the final hundred miles when she had already crossed the bridge over the almost deserted interstate highway.  
“Would you like to switch again?” he asked her.  
“No, no, it's okay,” she assured him. “I got this, I promise. This is it, baby!”  
They reached the end of the bridge, and turned onto the on ramp, and picked up the speed once again. Since it was still early in the morning, the car and the two trucks filled each lane: Lars' car ran side by side with Dave's truck on the right and Mark's truck on the left. They felt like a convey now, driving those final hundred miles back to Portland.  
“We're going to make a quick stop in Wilsonville,” she told him once the mileage signs entered their view, and Marcia and Hiro backed off behind them once more cars entered their view.  
“What for?” he asked her, running his fingers through his hair once again; he took a glimpse out of the window at the sight of the light growing stronger and stronger over the summits of the mountains.  
“Jason is at Sandra's house,” she reminded him.  
“Oh, yeah, that's right!”  
They bore down that final straight shot up to the Portland area until the signs pointing to the exits for Wilsonville sprung up out of the darkness. She merged into the right lane and Marcia and Hiro followed suit. They drove off the freeway and onto the road leading them to Sandra's house. The sky had changed from deep purple to soft blue and pink at that point, but the first rays of sunlight were still a few minutes away. They meandered about the suburbs until they recognized her house. Mia pulled up to the curb first, then Dave's truck parked behind her and Mark's truck brought up the rear. She shut off the car and they both let out long low whistles in unison.  
“That was an adventure,” he remarked.  
“I'll say,” she agreed with him, unbuckling her seat belt. “Let's go see Jason.”  
They climbed out of the car and headed up to the front step.  
“Mia!” Marcia called out for her from the curb. She turned around before the front door.  
“Did you see that car on the side of the road?” Marcia asked. “Down by the sand dunes?”  
“We did!” Lars declared as he reached for the doorknob and opened the door. Jason had left the house unlocked given he was the one person there.  
“That was Wayne's car, too!” Mia exclaimed with glee. Lars peered through the dark front foyer of the house and was met with silence. Silence, except for the hum of the refrigerator. He stepped into the living room for a peek around, and then he strode down the hall at a brisk pace to the guest bedroom. That sinking, icy feeling returned to him again, followed by a cold chill up his spine.  
He ran back to the front door where everyone congregated around Mia as if giving her a rallying.  
“Wait a minute, wait a minute—hang on, hang on,” he yelled from down the hall, in turn stopping them. “Stop the celebrations—Jason's not here! Jason! JASON!”  
Silence. Total silence. They all gaped at him as he returned to view.  
“Jason's not here!” he repeated again, his voice breaking. Mia clasped her hands to her mouth.  
“Oh, God—” Lars moaned, bringing a hand to his belly.  
“The warehouse!” Jerry declared.


	136. Chapter 136

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All your dreams are made  
> when you're chained to the mirror and the razor blade.  
> Today's the day that all the world will see.  
> Another sunny afternoon,  
> walking to the sound of my favorite tune;  
> tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know too soon.”  
> -”(What’s the Story) Morning Glory”, Oasis

They had shut the door but Lars locked the doorknob because he knew something would happen to the house if nothing kept it safe. They all crossed the front lawn back to their cars; he and Mia dove back into the front seats of his car and before he could say anything to her, she had put the keys into the ignition and fired it back up.  
“On the way over to Bridge of the Gods, you said?” she relayed to him.  
“Yes—off the side of that road heading out to Mount Hood,” he recalled, “you will see it.”  
She led them away from Sandra's house and back to the freeway to make the complete return to Portland. Jerry and Dave roared past them to make it there to the warehouse first, and it took Lars a moment to realize they were slowing down. His heart skipped a beat; but when he checked to see if they had fuel on board, he noticed they had an eighth of a tank. He returned his attention to the road, and the car curving with the sight of the next off ramp before them. He glanced about the road in concern.  
“Wait,” he said aloud, as they reached the side street, “wait, where are we going?”  
“The bakery,” she replied, unfazed as if nothing was happening.  
“What? Why?” he demanded.  
“I have an idea.”  
She wound her way around the side streets of Portland as if trying to lose the sight of Wayne coming up behind them. He peered out the window at the buildings passing by, each and every one of them showing the first glimmers of light and life for the coming day. He returned to the windshield in time to see their making the next stoplight green, followed by the next one, and the one after that.  
He soon recognized the neighborhood she had driven them into, and then, like magic, he spotted Smell the Magic standing on that familiar stretch of sidewalk. Mia flipped a turn in the middle of the road so they pulled up to the curb in the right direction. She switched off the car and climbed out, stuffing the keys into her pocket for safe keeping. Lars followed her onto the sidewalk and she took out the keys for the front door of the bakery.  
He noticed her hands shaking as she inserted the key into the slot and turned to the right so as to unlock the door. They both heard a soft click on the inside of the door and she pushed the door open for the two of them to step inside of the dark bakery. She leaned over to flick on the overhead lights. It was once again strange to see the glass displays emptied of their pastries.  
“So, what is your idea?” she asked her as she rounded the other end of the display to the table up against the wall even though her apron was still in the car.  
“I am going to make you donuts,” she told him, rubbing her hands together.  
“Now?!” he demanded, shocked by the request. “Mia, your ex husband is out for my blood and Jason is missing. James and Kirk might be at the warehouse, too.”  
“You are hungry,” she continued, gazing into his eyes. “I can sense it.”  
He stopped, staring at her with his eyebrows knitted together. He had no idea if this merely the early morning hours and the lack of sleep on her part talking, or if it insinuated something else.  
“What are you getting at?” he asked her in a low voice.  
“I need you stuffed,” she whispered to him. “Trust me on this. Please.”  
She rounded the far edge of the display with a small silver cookie sheet in both hands. He fluttered his eyelashes at her, and then, like the dawn behind his head and outside the door, it rose over him.  
“Ohhhhh, baby,” he breathed out, clutching his chest. “Oh—darling.” He slid his hand down onto the bottom of his shirt.  
“Yes,” she answered, walking into the room with the ovens. “Yes, indeed.”  
“Do you have—the ingredients?” he asked her.  
“Let me check—” She held up a finger at him before she ambled across the room for a peek into the refrigerator. There was a pause and then she spoke again.  
“As a matter of fact, I do. How many would you like?”  
“As many as you can make, min skat.”  
He lingered in the doorway as he watched her craft the dough from nothing right before his very eyes: he felt the butterflies in his stomach return to him as she brought out the bottle of tequila from the refrigerator. He thought what she had said before concerning the smell of the donuts: she never ate her donuts when she and Wayne were together, not one time. Either the man had the sense of smell of a blood hound or there was something more to them: the smell of spices and tequila soon filled that side of the room and he was eager to get his tongue on those donuts. He watched her place the five rings of dark colored, raw dough on the cookie sheet and then slip it into the oven next to her for a bit, and then she got to work on that fiery red glaze.  
Soon the bakery smelled of baked goods once again. But before the timer on the oven ended, a knock on the door caught both of their attention. Mia peeked behind Lars, and he turned around to see a tall man standing at the door and taking a peek inside of the bakery.  
“It's James,” he declared.  
“Let him in, let him in!”  
He strode across the floor of the bakery to open the door for his best friend, and James bowed into the room with a look of concern on his face.  
“There's some crazy shit about to go down,” he told them.  
“Where?” Mia asked, continuing to stir the metal bowl full of bright red glaze in front of her.  
“North side of town. Kim and Hiro from Soundgarden told me where they were going about five minutes ago. Some warehouse down by the river. They also said they hadn't seen you guys since you left Wilsonville. So I drove over to your house to see if you guys were home. The house was totally dark and empty so I—came here instead.” He sniffled the air.  
“What's cooking?”  
“Donuts,” said Mia.  
“She has a plan,” Lars added.  
“I need him stuffed full like a turkey,” she told James.  
“Oh, really?”  
“The timer was about to go off, too—” She reached over to turn off the time and switch off the oven. She picked up a spare pair of oven mitts to take out the hot cookie sheet. The aroma of fresh baked donuts straight out of the oven washed over the entire bakery. She let them sit for a moment before she drizzled the glaze over the tops. Lars returned to his spot in the doorway so as to watch her: James peered over his shoulder to join in on the process.  
Careful not to drip any glaze onto the floor, Mia tipped the bowl over the donuts. Her hands remained steady as she poured the glaze over the fresh baked rings. That red color was so bright it almost hurt Lars' eyes looking on at the donuts. Plumes of steam emerged off of the donuts from the amount of heat still inside of them.  
Once she finished the pouring over all of the donuts, she set down the bowl on the counter top behind her and then blew over the tops of the donuts to better cool them off.  
“Do you need help with that?” James offered from behind Lars' head.  
“Please,” she begged in between blows, “—they're still much too hot and we don't have time, either.”  
They both hurried into the room to assist her in blowing on the donuts. Their warm aroma caressed over Lars' face like the touch of her fingers on his skin, so much that the hunger in his stomach welled up inside of him out of nowhere. James fanned the donuts with his hands; Lars wanted those donuts right then and there, but it wasn't until she joined James in fanning them with her hands.  
“Okay, I think they're good!” she declared.  
“Good, good, good!” Lars reached for one on the corner closest to him and took a large bite.  
“Come on, let's take these up there,” James suggested, picking up two of the donuts.  
“We'll take my car!” he exclaimed with his mouth full as he picked up another one.  
Mia scooped up the other two with her left hand, and then she left the cookie sheet and the bowl there on the counter as they ran out of the bakery.  
“You want to lock the door?” James asked her as he and Lars waited for her there on the sidewalk.  
“I'll come back later,” she assured him, taking the key to the car out of her pocket with her free hand. Lars crammed another bite of donut into his mouth as he climbed into the passenger seat: even though the fluffy interior of the donut still felt hot from the baking, he had missed that combination of chocolate and spices more than he had missed making love with Mia for that past month. She fired up the car as soon as James buckled his seat belt with his free hand. Lars had finished the donut as soon as they had driven away from the neighborhood and back to the freeway, which at that point began to acquire more cars for the day.  
He shoved the next one into his mouth and downed it in a few bites. He swallowed the final bite when James handed him the two in his hand. At that point, the sun began to rise over the eastern side of Portland and the summit of Mount Hood off in the distance, bathing the entire region in golden rays of fresh light for a brand new day. Lars squinted his eyes at the sight of the sun and he thought about taking the sunglasses out of his pocket but he already had his hands full of donuts. The whistle in the duct tape outside of the window returned as they made their way into the heart of downtown.  
“By the way, what happened to the window?” asked James.  
“It's a long story,” Mia replied, brisk.  
“I'll fell you layer,” Lars answered with his mouth full. As they crossed the Willamette River, and Mia merged into the right hand turn lane, he swallowed down the fourth donut. At that point, the bloated and heavy feeling returned once again to his stomach, and his legs started to feel as though they were made of lead, all from the sheer amount of food he was ingesting once more in such a brief time. Once he topped off that final bite, he bowed his chin and covered his mouth to stifle a belch.  
“Oof, pardon me,” he told them, squinting against the incoming sunlight as they turned around a bend in the freeway. She handed him the final two donuts for the taking and they merged onto the highway leading out to northeastern Portland and Mount Hood. At that point, Lars reached into his pocket for the sunglasses and put them on over his face with his left hand. He felt a piece of paper in his pocket; once he put on the sunglasses, he read the writing on the paper. A phone number; and then he remembered about that number as he stuck it back into his pocket.  
She pulled down the visor and kept her eye on the road before them, winding its way through the quiet suburban neighborhoods of east Portland. Mount Hood rose high over the dark earth and soon, they were met with the meanders of the river. He peered out the windshield to the sight of the dark waters making up the Columbia River, and the faint glimmers from the sunrise shining over the rippled surface. Amidst the full feeling inside of him, that icy sensation returned to the pit of his stomach. He had a feeling he had no desire to know about as they drove around a sweeping right hand turn.  
“Is that it right there?” she asked him, pointing out of the windshield to the break in the trees, the same one overlooking that side of the river.  
“Yeff!” he declared with his mouth full.  
“Yeah, there's Dave's truck,” she added as she pulled over onto the right shoulder of the road, right behind Dave's truck and within range of the sign indicating the distance over to Bridge of the Gods.  
“Wait a minute, I know what this place is,” she said aloud as she switched off the car.  
“You do?” he demanded upon swallowing the bite of donut.  
“Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what this place is. Wayne told me he found a job here, albeit a temporary one. He told me he was going to help construct this building, and that was in the middle of November.”  
“November,” Lars echoed, preparing to take another bite of donut.  
“November. I can kind of see why now, too.”  
“There's no windows on that building,” James remarked.  
“There's no windows and it's in an odd position. What kind of warehouse did you say this was, papi?”  
“Ice cream, I think. If I remember correctly. When Jerry and I came here that one time, the old man opened the door and a load of cold air came out.”  
“Ice cream! So there you have it. That explains that. Come on—” She climbed out of the car first, and then James followed out of the back seat into the morning light. Lars finished the final donut and unbuttoned his jeans by the time Jerry, Layne, Kim, and Dave climbed out of their trucks. They all crossed the road to the mouth of the dirt driveway and in between the two pine trees.  
“Okay, so what's the plan?” asked Kim.  
“I don't know about that big grated door here, so let's find a way inside and see if we can find Jason,” Dave explained.  
“There's a door on this side of the building,” Jerry pointed to the left corner of the warehouse.  
“Oh!” He and Dave jogged to the edge of the building, the soles of their shoes crunching over the dirt.  
“I think it only opens one way, though, Dave,” Lars called after them, swallowing and bringing his fingers to his lips. The taste of the tequila and the spices lingered in the back of his mouth, and he lay a hand over his belly. Mia turned to him with a look of concern on her face.  
“Are you okay?” she asked him.  
“Donuts,” he answered with a slight chuckle.  
Voices emerged from the other side of the warehouse. Jerry sprinted out from behind the edge of the building so as to lift up that heavy grated door on the wall facing them.  
“Kim!” he called back. “Kim! James! Help me out here!”  
The two men hurried over to the side of the warehouse to assist him. Lars, Mia, and Layne watched them lift up the door off of the ground, making a loud clanking noise all the while. The ground floor of the warehouse beheld rows of metal shelves holding large black containers, and Lars began to wonder if it was really ice cream in there. Dave's red hair emerged from the inside of that front room and Jerry, Kim, and James joined him on the inside of the building. Layne hurried over to them, which in turn left Lars and Mia there on the dirt. They turned to one another.  
“Oh—papacito,” she told him in a hushed voice.  
“Darling,” he retorted to her, throwing his arms around her. “Min skat.”  
He ran his hands all over her back as he leaned in for the kiss on her lips. Her hands caressed his lower back and made their way to the seat of his pants. Her fingers pulsated upon his flesh; despite her not having much to eat and drink over the night, her lips still felt soft to him. He thought about dropping down onto the dirt when she let go of his lips so as to guide him over to the patch of grass lining the driveway.  
He lay down on the grass after yanking his jeans further down his hips and thighs. She unbuttoned her pants and kicked them off of her legs before she dropped down over him for more kisses on the lips. Then she reached underneath his shirt for a little belly rub to ease the sensation on his stomach. He groaned inside of his throat at the feeling; she leaned over to kiss him again, on the lips and then on the side of the neck.  
She lay on top of his body with her hands clasped onto the sides of his face.  
The whole area smelled so good, so fresh with morning dew and river water, and the morning sun felt so warm against his skin. Everything was right in its place when she began to gyrate the middle of her body over his hips. He closed his eyes to take in the feeling through all of his senses. He felt her peel back the band of his underwear.  
Skidding tires on the pavement in front of him forced him to open his eyes. Wayne's car bounded into the driveway and skidded to a stop next to the tree on the left. He saw the fury twisted upon that man's face as well as Marcia, Sonia, and Hiro watching the two of them from the truck across the road. Wayne lumbered out of the driver's seat of the car and Lars sneered at him, a sneer as much of pleasure as it was from spite.  
“Yeah,” Lars sputtered out to him when he came within earshot. “Yeah—this right here—” He belched again and started to pant from Mia grinding him there on the ground. “—this right here makes you focking jealous, does it not?”


	137. Chapter 137

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Flash before my eyes,  
> now it's time to die.  
> Burning in my brain...  
> I can feel the flames.”  
> -”Ride the Lightning”, Metallica

She gyrated her hips to and fro as if she churned butter, and she kept her hands pressed to his belly to ease the feeling inside of him. Right there, right in between her legs was that wet and soft spot. He rolled his eyes up to the back of his head and his chest heaved from the feeling. She started to breathe heavy from the motions. But before she could climax on her part, Wayne let out a sound which resembled an angry bird. Lars opened his eyes in time to see him lumbering towards them, his face twisted in fury. He clasped onto Mia's shoulders and yanked her off of his body.  
“Get off of him! Get off of him, you fucking whore!” he bellowed. She struggled to get out of his grip and pull up her underwear at the same time.  
“Let go of me!” she ordered, kicking her legs and swinging her arm about. “Let go of me!”  
“No, you fucking come here! You come here and listen to me, you little bitch!”  
“Hey, get off of her!” Lars screeched, pulling up his pants and scrambling to his feet. But before he could come any closer to wedge himself in between the two of them, Wayne pointed a fat sausage of a finger right into his face.  
“You stay out of this, you little shit!” he bellowed, his face turning bright red.  
“Excuse me—” Lars started, slapping the fat hand out of his face.  
“No, fuck you!” he shouted.  
His keeping one hand off of her allowed her to stomp hard on his foot. He yelled out in agony and in turn let go of her. Mia shot forward to Lars, who put his arm around her to get her away from him. Breathing hard, Wayne glared at the two of them there in the middle of the driveway.  
“Give me back my wife,” he growled at Lars.  
“She's not your wife anymore, genius,” he snapped.  
“She faked her death, you moron. She's obviously still alive and so our marriage isn't nulled.”  
“I was out of your range long enough for you to finalize it, Wayne,” Mia scolded him.  
“No you weren't,” he snarled into her face. “No, you fucking weren't! You fucking were not gone long enough!”  
“Everyone grieved me and showed you I was gone, God dammit!”  
“Yeah, and then you fucking ran off to Dick faced McGee here. I should have you back just for that!”  
“Well, you are not getting her back, mate,” Lars interrupted.  
“Shut up, idiot! I'm not your mate, either. What are you, British? I should've known you were. Mia's always wanted to run off with a man from overseas—that's why she wants to go to France. Well, that ain't happening now, is it?”  
“'Ain't' isn't a word!” Lars declared.  
“Wait a minute, what are you saying?” Mia demanded.  
“I caught you both in the act,” he explained, “and I have a mountain of evidence behind me, too. So now I can report you both and you'll get your passports revoked. You both can leave the country but you won't come home.”  
“Report us for what?” Mia demanded again.  
“You for faking your death and him for assisting, and the both of you for trespassing on my parents' property, and since my mom's gone now, I can probably get you both for murder, too. I will hoist you both up by your own petards now. Just you watch!”  
“No, you FUCKING WON'T!” a voice behind them shouted. They whirled around at the sight of Marcia and Sonia throwing rocks into the windows of Wayne's car: the former picked up a rather large one to shatter the windshield.  
“MY CAR!” he yelled. “MY DAD'S IN THERE!”  
Furious, he chased after Marcia, who threw a handful of gravel at his head. Right then, Sonia took out a pocket knife from her shorts pocket.  
“What the—” Lars began at the sight of it. He turned to Mia. “Is that the knife I let you borrow?”  
“It is! That's the knife Dave gave you—I took it with me and when you called me that morning in the hotel, Marcia was playing around with it and I let them borrow for the day.”  
They turned back around right as Sonia stabbed the knife into the rear tire. She yanked back so as to let out the air and then moved up to the front tire to give that one a stab. She yanked it out and climbed to her feet right as Marcia sprinted through the open grated door into the warehouse.  
“Yeah, like you'll be safe in there!” Wayne called after her on the other side of the car. “The air's automatically set to five below zero!”  
“He's not going anywhere,” Sonia assured them, putting the knife back into her pocket.  
“Yeah, and he's going to have a hard time trying to prove anything happened,” Lars pointed out. “I torched that copy of Ashley's manuscript.”  
“You torched it?!” Wayne stammered.  
“Actually, I stand corrected,” Lars lowered his voice as he let go of Mia. “Angela did. She burned that fucker. Everything you have ever worked for has been a complete waste of time for you.”  
“Like I'm going to believe you, you little bitch,” he snarled into his face. “Angela would never betray me like that.”  
“Alas, she did,” he retorted, keeping his tone calm. “She betrayed your ass so much that she married another man.”  
“Oh, like Ben Shepherd scares me. I could probably snap his ass in half like a twig.”  
“You should be scared of him.” Lars pressed his hands to his hips: even though his pants were unbuttoned, he stood there glaring up at him as if facing a giant. “I have seen him a mere couple of times but I bet you money he will beat you more and harder than how you beat Chad Channing.”  
“Oh, for fuck's sake, I beat him by accident!” Wayne declared.  
“You still beat the hell from him,” Lars scoffed, staring hard into his face. “Besides, who are the police going to believe more, a guy who's really only guilty of eating a ton of food and getting a little bit of a belly—” He rested a hand on the bottom of his shirt. “—or will they believe a guy who left lewd messages on two innocent women's answering machines, threatened to rape a woman and her daughter, beat his wife, came after her lover on several occasions, beat an innocent man for no reason, and abused his power and his own skill to find out about something that he had no business finding out? Who are they going to believe more, huh? Who are they going to believe?”  
“Me, as soon as I snap your neck and rub that big mouth of yours in the dirt behind you,” he threatened. He showed Lars a sneer accompanied with a chuckle. “I should've known she was fucking a British man. Or German. What are you?”  
“KISS MY SWEATY DANISH BALLS, YA FAT FUCK!”  
Lars shot his foot forward and kicked Wayne right in the big belly. He toppled backwards onto the dirt, taken off guard. Lars gestured Mia and Sonia to follow him. The three of them broke into a run towards the warehouse; he bowed his head even though the door held high over the bottom edge of the entryway.  
They were greeted by a sudden sharp drop in the temperature there in the building, such that their breaths formed white feathery clouds emerging out of their mouths. All around them were rows and rows of those black containers; at the far end of the room, Marcia stood at the base of a stairwell. Once they reached the halfway point of the room, James burst out from the doorway at the top of the stairs, followed by Jerry and Layne, then Kim and Dave, and then—  
“Jason!” Lars cried out, his voice echoing over the slick concrete beneath their feet.  
“And Kirk, too!” Marcia added. They all clustered there at the base of the stairs and Lars skidded to a stop with Mia and Sonia on either side of him.  
“Where's that big fat hog who chloroformed us?” Kirk demanded.  
“I kicked him right in the blubber,” Lars replied. Dave let out a loud belly laugh and then held out his hand for him for a high five.  
“Let's get the hell out of here,” Jerry declared. But before any of them could take one step forward, there was a loud clang overhead and the gears powering the grated door began to close it. A low rumble hummed through the floor and the walls of the warehouse.  
“What the hell was that?” James demanded.  
“The AIR CONDITIONER!” Lars shouted, his voice echoing over the room. They all ran blind to the door on the side of the room; Marcia and Kirk, meanwhile started back up the stairs even though no one had any idea where they lead up to in there. Layne and Kim reached the door first; the latter held onto the handle and pushed. Nothing.  
“It's stuck!” Kim declared even as Layne tried to help him push it open.  
“No! NO!” Lars shrieked as the air conditioner picked up power, dropping the temperature even more.  
“We'll freeze to death in here!” Sonia cried out.  
“Not on my watch!”  
They all turned to see behind the containers, and the sight of Dave with his hands underneath the bottom of the grated door. He had caught it about a foot off of the ground, just in time. He groaned and grunted from the gears turning and grinding against him.  
“Lars, come over here!” he commanded. Lars took two steps forward and slipped upon the concrete. The temperature was dropping so fast that the floor already began to ice over. He clung onto the backs of the cold metal shelves next to them so as to steady himself. Keeping one hand on them, he ran alongside the shelves, all along the floor towards the grated door.  
Lars reached the end of the row, let go, and no sooner had he taken another couple of steps when he slipped again and landed right on his hip right behind Dave's legs. He crawled onto his hands and knees around his ankles. He assisted Dave in picking up the door, but it was difficult to do so from the slick layer atop the concrete floor. He pinched his eyes shut as the two of them struggled to lift it up off of the ground, to beat the machine.  
Lars thought about how much Dave wanted to protect him, given how much he made such a point of “don't fuck with my band mates” and “you fuck with my band mates, you fuck with me.” He thought about all of the shows that man could have played with them, and even more so with Cliff still alive. He then thought about his parents, his grandmother, and his godfather. He thought about Denmark, and all of its coldness, very much like the ground floor of the warehouse right behind him. Those harrowing thoughts returned to him once more, the same ones he had had when Wayne chased after him and Mia the month before.  
But he felt someone else hold onto the bottom of the door to help out the two of them. He opened his eyes at the sight of Jason and James next to him, and Kirk on Dave's left. The gears overhead screeched in agony as their teeth struggled to do their job against the five men pushing back.  
“Mother—fucking—” Dave groaned; Lars watched Mia, Sonia, Marcia, Kim, Jerry, and Layne slip out of the warehouse in between them, and then Wayne lumbering towards them. He lifted his feet off of the ground so as to kick him again, and he clasped onto Lars' ankles.  
“Yeah, I've got you now, buddy boy!” he cackled like a madman. Dave extended his right foot and kicked him right in the mouth. Wayne yelled out in pain, thus letting go of Lars' feet. He landed on his back but soon recuperated right there on the outside of the warehouse. Kirk and Jason ducked out right behind him, which left James and Dave to hold up the door. Both men ducked their heads out from underneath the bottom and into the sunlight; Lars watched them let go of the door and the same time and it fell onto the threshold with a loud clang!  
As Wayne crawled there on the dirt with his hand pressed to his mouth, they all ran back up the driveway to the pavement. Lucky for them, no cars were to be seen all up and down the road: Lars, Mia, James, Kirk, and Jason all piled into the car. The former reached the passenger side first and flung open the door. Mia fumbled the keys as she almost swan dove into the seat.  
“Get in the car! Get in the car!” Lars shouted across her to his band mates; he gazed beyond them at the sight of Wayne climbing to his feet with a mouthful of blood. “Get in the car—shit!”  
He gasped at the sight Will Davidson struggling to open the back door of their car.  
“I dropped the keys!” Mia shrieked, stooping down in between her legs. He held his breath as James took the seat behind him, Kirk the one in the middle, and Jason rounding out the back seat. She lifted her head with the car keys in hand and stuck it into the ignition.  
The car roared to life at the same time as the two trucks in front of them, which pulled forward down the road as if they were all headed to Mount Hood.  
“Hang on, boys!” Mia commanded, turning the car into the road and into the opposite lane. They jolted forward right as Will hurled something at the passenger window next to James.  
“What the fuck was that?” Lars demanded.  
“A hockey stick!” James declared. “He threw a HOCKEY STICK at us!”  
“What the hell was he doing with a hockey stick—” Mia stepped on the throttle and they jolted away from there again.  
“Come on, car!” she ordered as the car struggled to get back into the groove once again.  
“It's tired,” Lars told her. “It drove until it ran out of fuel on a mountain pass, and then it drove all night long. It's also had an angry old man brandishing shit at the windows.”  
“It's also got more cargo on board, too,” she added, shifting it into the lower gear and then back into the drive gear. They then shot forward.  
“Where should we go?” Kirk asked her.  
“A place that'll protect us better than Smell the Magic,” Mia replied, “I mean that, too.”  
Lars held up his hand for her and she clasped onto it as they zoomed along the edge of the river back to downtown Portland.


	138. Chapter 138

Mia kept her foot pressed firm to the gas pedal as they rode into town. Lars relaxed his hand and his wrist so as to let her squeeze him; by the time they reached the same neighborhood as her house, the bones in his hand were in agony. When they took the next exit off of the freeway, he let out a groan inside of his throat. Meanwhile, another groan emerged from the engine of the car and Lars felt his heart sink at the sound of it.  
“How we doing on fuel?” asked James.  
“Almost empty,” she replied, “come on—come on, just a little bit more. Just a little bit more—”  
They made a stoplight green and then, once they cleared the intersection, the car sputtered and jolted again. Lars watched Mia pressed her foot down on the gas pedal again.  
“This thing will—start—pogoing,” he grunted. “Just—Just—Just—”  
“I think you're hurting him, Mia,” Jason declared.  
“Aw, oh, jeez!” she cried out, releasing Lars' hand. He gasped when she let go of him, and clasped onto his hand and brought it to his chest to ease the pain. He knew she did not want to anything in order to hurt him, and so, as he bowed his head forward to the glove box, he knew she remembered what she had told him. He felt the roll on his waist poke out from beneath his seat belt; and he pressed his forearms to his belly to alleviate the pain in his hand and the burgeoning ache in his stomach from eating too many donuts and not enough other food to keep his beautiful body nourished. He kept his hands right over his waist as he lifted up his head.  
He wanted to tell Mia he didn't feel good but she was too fixated on nursing the car for a little bit longer. As the leather shop where she bought her thigh high boots entered view, he had a faint glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, she could get the car to her house in time. The pain bubbled inside of him: that persistent, nagging sensation there in the pit of his stomach. As they crossed the intersection, Mia gave the car another touch of the gas pedal, that is until the engine sputtered again and died right in the middle of the road.  
“Shit!” she shouted, slamming the palms of her hands on the edge of the steering wheel. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—Lars, I'm so sorry.”  
“No, no—the car is the least of our problems right now.” He rubbed his belly with both hands while she did what she could to bring the car to the side of the road, but they had very little speed and momentum to assist them. She tapped the brakes before they reached the sidewalk in front of Curl Up and Dye.  
“Oh, the salon!” Kirk declared.  
“Yeah, and look who else is here—” She pointed out the windshield to the two cars parked near the front door.  
“Who else is here?” asked Jason.  
“Trent! He just got a janitorial job here, like just started it yesterday. Danielle is here, too.”  
The car drifted to the curb at an angle, even though Mia steered the wheel with fury to try and straighten it out.  
“Fuck it,” James told her as they heard a scraping sound from the front fender on the edge of the curb. She yanked on the parking brake and took the keys out of the ignition. They all climbed out of the car onto the sidewalk; Lars clasped onto his belly as Mia led them all into the salon and to the protection of Trent. The ache almost proved to be too much to bear for him as she yanked open the front door and the five of them hurried inside of the building.  
Trent emerged from the nook on the side of the room with a tall yellow janitorial bucket on wheels in hand.  
“Hey, guys—whoa, what's going on here?”  
“My ex husband and his father are out to kill us,” Mia told him. “You have to hide us!”  
Lars sank down on the shiny linoleum floor next to one of the chairs in utter agony. He peered up at the shelf over his head, and the sight of the scissors there. Even staring at something else could not keep him from gasping and groaning inside of his throat. Too many donuts and that sandwich he had had over the course of the trip did not suffice him.  
“Is he okay?” Trent asked aloud. Mia finally turned around to look at him.  
“Lars? Lars, are you alright?” She hurried over to him and knelt down on the floor to the right of him.  
“Lars? Are you okay?” she asked him in a gentle tone.  
“My stomach really, really hurts,” he moaned, shuffling his feet over the floor.  
“Too many donuts,” James said from behind them.  
“Way too many—and all at once at that, too—” He gasped from the pain digging at him from the inside to the point of bringing a wave of nausea over him. He groaned again, and that time brought his knees to his chest. She huddled close to him with her arms around him. He pinched his eyes shut as she brought her hand to the one side of his face and her lips to the other side. Her kiss was gentle and delicate, like all of the times she kissed him.  
“I don't want to hurt you,” she whispered to him, “I never want to hurt you. And I never meant to, either.”  
“Of course not, min skat,” he whispered back to her; she dropped her hand to the opposite side of his body for an ever so gentle squeeze of his love handle. “It is never your intent.”  
A truck bounded into the spot right outside of the door.  
“Who the hell is this now?” Trent asked aloud.  
“Dave!” James' voice roared out like a lion. Dave, Marcia, and Sonia climbed out of the truck and into the salon; he ran a hand through his wavy red hair as they stepped inside.  
“See, I told you they'd be here!” Marcia told him as she shut the door behind her.  
“We were just over at Smell the Magic,” Sonia explained, “we saw James' car there but we didn't see anyone else.”  
“Where's Jerry, Kim, Layne, and Hiro?” Mia asked them, turning around to take a look at them.  
“They high tailed it over to Mount Hood for all we know,” Dave answered; “saw Matt Cameron on the way over here, though.” The two girls next to him meanwhile looked on at Lars and Mia with concern.  
“Is—Is he alright?” Dave asked her.  
“Bad, bad tummy ache.” She snuggled closer to Lars; he bowed his head and closed his eyes to better take in all of the love she was giving him. She kissed him on the side of the face again and stroked his hip.  
“So what's all of this about her ex and his dad?” Trent asked all of them.  
“I doubt they're gonna get here very soon, though,” Sonia replied, “I slashed two of their tires so they're not going to get very far away from the river.”  
Silence. Then Trent spoke again.  
“Where's your mom?”  
“She, Liv, and Sandra are all down in the Bay Area,” Marcia told him. “All of our things are down there, too.”  
“And my car is in shambles,” Lars' voice broke as he spoke up. He gasped again that time at the sudden sharp pain in his stomach, and bowed his head once more.  
“What about Ashley?” Trent persisted. “Where's she?”  
“Seattle,” James replied in a flat tone.  
“Seattle,” Kirk and Dave echoed at the same time.  
“I guess Kurt and Tracy broke up because Ashley's with him now,” Mia told him. But right as the words left her lips, a loud crunch of metal outside of the salon caught all of their attention. Dave, Marcia, and Sonia glanced behind them to the sight of Wayne's shabby car, which had rear ended the truck and blocked them right there in the parking spot. The three of them dodged away from the door; Dave brought the two girls to the floor underneath the chair next to Lars and Mia and put his arms around them. Trent guided James, Kirk, and Jason into the nook and he picked up the push broom out of the bucket as an act of self defense.  
Will threw open the door and brandished something shiny in his hand. Wayne lumbered from behind him, covering his mouth with his hand. Lars snuggled closer to Mia; out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Marcia and Sonia doing the same with Dave.  
“Gimme tha' gun, Da'!” Wayne sounded like he had lost all feeling in his mouth. Mia reached up to the shelf over their heads to the pair of scissors, the one thing that would protect him even though Lars made out the shape of the barrel in Will's hand.  
“Stay away from us, Wayne!” she shouted, pointing the blades at him. “Stay the fuck away from us! Stay the fuck away from us or I swear to God I will shove these right into your manhood, you bastard!”  
“Get that little long haired bitch with the weird accent!” Will ordered, pointing the gun at Dave, Marcia, and Sonia.  
“You get him!” Wayne retorted, still covering his mouth with his hand. “You're th' one with th' gun!”  
Will then turned to his son and grasped onto his fat throat with his free hand. He never dropped the hand before his mouth.  
“Don't,” he growled, “—toy—with me—you little shit. I brought you into this world and dammit, I will take you out of it.”  
“You say tha',” Wayne pointed out, gasping and choking, “bu' you ne'er did all my life, now di' you?”  
Lars gaped at Mia at the sound of that, and then back at Dave, Marcia, and Sonia, all three of whom were taken aback by that.  
“Of course,” Mia breathed out. The pain in his belly nagged at him, perhaps more than the sight of the gun pointed at the three people next to them. He eyed the scissors in her hand and wondered if that would protect the two of them from a pair of bullets. She wanted to protect him, and Dave protected him, but he considered about who was going to protect them from danger. Lars lowered his hands and licked his lips. He turned to Mia, who had her face turned away from him right then. It was going to be insane, but he had come too far in this to sit back and let his woman continue to throw herself into the fire.  
The world needed a hero.  
He stood to his feet, his sore feet shaking from having his shoes on for so long and from doing so much running. Everything felt as if it was moving in slow motion: he lunged forward with his hands outstretched. He clasped onto Will's wrist to guide the gun away from Dave and the girls, and lifted the old man's arm towards the ceiling.  
Startled, Will turned to him as he fell towards the floor, but he caught himself on his son's fat body. Lars stared into Will's face, into those cold uncaring eyes, as he struggled to keep the gun point away from anyone in there. The old man gritted his teeth at him and Lars thought about spitting in his face when the front door of the salon opened.  
Something big and black leapt onto Will's back and clamped onto the nape of his neck. He dropped the gun as he fell to the floor; Lars staggered back to the open front door as Ace, Matt's dog, clobbered the old man right before him. Matt stepped into the salon right then and yanked off his sunglasses.  
“He recognized you from the street!” he told Lars. “I saw your car and then we pulled in here. I pointed you out and he remembered you.”  
Meanwhile, Trent swung the push broom about in front of them. Matt and Lars ducked down so as to miss him but he missed Wayne, and hit the wall behind him instead. He ducked down to the floor which allowed Lars to put his foot on his back, pinning him down.  
“You picked the wrong bitch to fuck with,” he snarled at him. “Both of you did.”  
“Get off of me!” Wayne yelled. Ace whimpered and whined, and Matt sprung into action.  
“Let go of my dog!” he shouted at Will, who scrambled over to the gun laying on the floor. He pointed the barrel at Lars' belly.  
“YOU'RE DEAD NOW!”  
“FREEZE! POLICE!”  
The room fell silent as two police officers lurked behind Will's head with their guns pointed at him. Lars lifted his foot off of Wayne's back and took one step back. Matt scratched Ace behind the ears as he tried to calm him down.  
“Put the gun down,” the one on the right commanded. “Put the gun down!”  
Will set it down on the linoleum as the one on the left whipped out shiny metal hand cuffs.  
“It's the cop who showed up at our house back in December,” Lars heard Marcia say to Dave.  
“Wayne Davidson,” said the one on the right, taking out his hand cuffs, “you're under arrest for destruction of property and now the assault and attempted manslaughter of several people in Washington and Oregon, including Chad Channing, Ben Shepherd, and Andrew Wood.”  
Lars gaped over at Mia.  
“Angela,” he mouthed at her.  
“Probably,” she mouthed back at him.  
Another officer stepped into the salon to assist the other two, but once they had the two men in hand cuffs, she approached Lars, who leaned up against the wall, the pain in his stomach now full on nausea.  
“Are you alright?” she asked him.  
“They were—going—to kill me,” he stammered, “and my girlfriend—and all of us in here.”  
“Well, it's okay, they're going to jail now,” she assured him, and then she turned to Trent. Mia dropped the scissors and hurried over to Lars to embrace him with tears in her eyes.  
“Thank you,” she whispered into his ear. “Thank you again. You saved me again.”  
“I saved all of us,” he told her, stroking her back.  
“We're okay,” she breathed, her voice breaking. “We're okay now.”  
“We are okay,” he repeated. “We are okay, my darling.”

* * * * * * * * *

Will and Wayne were both hauled off to the county jail until the courts summoned them. Meanwhile, the police interviewed everyone in the salon to figure out what happened, but given everyone split up and ventured off in different directions in response to them, everyone had a different account of what happened. Lars, on the other hand, could hardly contain the pain inside of his stomach. While the third officer asked him about what had happened, he sat on the sidewalk, out of breath and thirsty.  
“I was going to be shot in the stomach,” he told her, “if anything, it feels as though he had already shot me there, even though he never did. Yes, that is my car sticking out in the street there. It ran out of fuel as we were rolling up to the salon here.”  
Lucky for him, the officer kept the interview with him short before she turned her attention to Marcia and Sonia. He folded his arms over his knees to ease the pain in his belly but it did nothing. He thought about doing the same thing he did in the airport after his night with Sonia but given he sat on hard concrete instead of a plastic chair, he simply sat upright and brought a hand to his lower belly.  
At one point, Mia took a seat next to him there on the curb and set her purse in her lap. She then put her arm around him.  
“The house is not too far from here,” she pointed out. “Just a couple of blocks.”  
“So as soon as they leave, we can just take a walk back there,” he followed along.  
“Well, actually, you can walk back there. I'll give you the key and you've seen the house, too.”  
“True. But what about my car? What about you?”  
“James called your management and they're getting a tow truck here for your car. The one officer got my purse out of there, but they'll take care of it here downtown. Trent's going to drive Marcia, Sonia, and me to the airport so we can go back to the Bay Area and get our things.”  
“You guys can't hitch a ride with Dave?”  
“No, he's going all the way back down to L.A. to record an album.”  
“Ohhhh, I see. I bet he's got to boogie back there, too. You know, studio time slots.”  
“Right, and San Francisco is pretty out of his way, too.”  
She reached into her purse for her keys and handed them to him.  
“You know, Mia,” he started, fingering the key ring, “I have been thinking. I might sell my house and move in with you.”  
“Really?” Her face lit up.  
“Yeah. You know. So we can be together more often and neither of us have to make that long ass drive again. I'll try and convince my parents that Lake Oswego's not too bad for them.”  
She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, and then he turned his head for a kiss on her lips. He gazed into her eyes and for a split second, the pain in his belly went away. She stroked the side of his face before she glanced behind him to the officers finishing their interviews with everyone. The one who arrested Will strode over to them.  
“So after hearing all of the witness accounts, there's going to be a great number of charges pressed against the two of them,” he told them in a single breath. “Do either of you know what happened to Jennifer? Will's wife?”  
Lars and Mia glanced at one another.  
“Other than the fact she was a good woman,” he told him, “sadly, no.”  
“Okay. Well, this whole thing is being investigated. In the mean time, the two of you can go back home. Stay safe.”  
“Thank you,” Mia said to him.  
“Yeah, thank you,” Lars called after him. Once he walked away, Mia leaned her head against his shoulder.  
“Is there food in your fridge?” he asked her.  
“There is,” she replied, kissing the side of his face again.  
“Come on, Mia, we're going!” Marcia called to her from Trent's car.  
“You back there and take care of yourself and settle your stomach, big boy. I shall return soon.” She kissed him again before she climbed to her feet to join her friends. Lars watched them back out of the space and head out of the parking lot before he stood up and proceeded to take that walk to the blue and white house.


	139. Chapter 139

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now I know that that last chapter could have qualified as the ending, BUT! every elaborate story needs closure, and I am positive this two parter epilogue from Lars and Olivia will do it. Four and a half months of sitting down and writing every single day, the longest thing I have ever written (and quite possibly, correct me if I’m wrong, the longest Metallica fic online now) is finally FINISHED! I can’t believe it! Writing this fic has helped me through some pretty hard days, days where I had no idea if I would finish it because of things happening in my home life and out of my control. I have hope for Painted in a Corner next and any future longfics I think of. Thank you so much reading, and I hope this does it!  
> xoxo, nirvhannah/Alison Chains 💜💜

Well, Elske, we did quite well. I am glad that you were with me every step of the way from the day I bought you in the airport cafe to now. I hold you against my chest like a school girl holding love notes from her crush and thus it is time for the final entry amongst your pages, for a while anyways. I might come back to you, but nothing is set in stone right now.  
I am in the living room of Mia's house, the house which is now my house, too. I just made myself a big sandwich—no, I mean, huge: it had three slices of bread and a bunch of lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, mustard, Gouda cheese, and some pastrami on board. It was toasted on top of that. I also ate up a bunch of leftover rice and my stomach feels a hell of a lot better now that I have much more substance inside but I long for her. I long for her touch, for the lusty feeling between us…  
I am honest to God at the point now where I cannot eat something without thinking about love making. I cannot eat something without wanting to connect to another soul, another feeling of flesh next to me. That warm silky feeling inside of my stomach needs to have that gentle touch over it. She told me she will be back before I know it but until then, I itch and ache for soft touch. Soft touch against my own softness.  
This house will always give me a bad feeling, that weird turbulent feeling I get whenever I have not had a bite to eat or when I sense something terrible about to happen. Maybe it was all of the terrible things he did to her in here, and maybe it is also from the fact her parents disowned her here, right in this very room that I am sitting in. I almost want to wash down this couch and rid of it the germs left behind by her past. Clean out the skeletons in the closet and make way for the new lovely gold and silver that awaits the two of us.  
Speaking of terrible things, I sincerely hope that Mia never finds out about Angela and me. Or the fact that I actually have feelings for Sonia now. She went with Mia back down to the Bay Area, too, which means I am all alone here in Portland. Perhaps another walk? Just so long as I do not come across any more stale danishes, I will enjoy it. It is a lovely day.  
My number one question right at the moment is what is going to happen now? There is a lot of things I must do now. I have to sell my house in El Cerrito and move up here: I also have to convince my parents to come to Lake Oswego, and if Cliff can convince James and me to relocate to San Francisco, perhaps I can utilize my “Danish charm” some more so as to bring my band up here? I have no idea. Selling is a complete bitch, my parents are not getting any younger (and they're pretty reticent between trading back and forth between Marin Heights and Copenhagen enough as is), and James and I made that agreement to come to San Francisco kind of on a gamble. I have faith in Seattle but Portland is an even bigger unknown.  
There are a lot of niches here, I have found. We might wedge our way into one of those niches or make our own but it is difficult to say. When you have a multitude of niches against a canopy, they all start to kind of look the same after a while.  
Don't get me wrong, Elske, I like it here, I like Portland: it reminds me of home, especially the lake. But Seattle is more so the case, as is San Francisco. And on top of all of this, I simply don't know. The future is wide open, not just for myself but for Mia, too. Her husband is gone off to prison now—we might have to stand at the witness' stand at some point in the future, but let him have it I say—and her parents are long gone. And what I am going to do with you? Shall I put you in a place where my future self, wherever he is, twenty, thirty years from now, can find you and look back at his young self and all of his deepest, darkest, and most intimate of thoughts? Or shall I dispose of you?  
No, I don't want to get rid of you. To rid of you would be to rid a part of my mind. I think I will put you away by the time I am done here. Put you away and hope for the best, so that when I am an old man and all of my hair is gone and my eyes have sunken so deep into my skull that I have all but lost my sight, I can look back on this period of life as nothing more than a hot, torrid adventure. It really has been hot.  
My encounters with Mia and her friends have opened me to my own sexuality and my sense of adventure, the latter of which has been uncovered more so this past year alone than the prospect of being in a band. I hope I can continue with these sexy feelings that burn through my body and bring a whole new sense of life to my own. I hope these torrid sensations that smolder within me until they catch fire never stop catching fire. The times I have made love or choked the chicken or reached an orgasm, I notice something about my body: I feel… liberated, like this is where I must be at all times, to feel it within me. And food and music have sealed out this trifecta if you will of the feeling of life, of being alive. I do not want to lose that joy, that euphoria, that orgasm… all of it coming from filling my stomach, or hitting things with sticks in front of thousands of people, or getting my ass cheeks squeezed by my girlfriend.  
And yet, there is this nagging feeling, and not the nagging feeling I experienced earlier in the car on the way over to the salon. Speaking of which, I hope James gets his car back. And I know that with luck and prowess, Dave and Megadeth will make a badass album in the coming weeks. I have faith in all of the bands out of Seattle, especially that Mother Love Bone—they put on such a huge show. And the sight of Trent working at Curl Up and Dye made me wonder how Nine Inch Nails' album is coming along, but even I can say, as a guy who recorded three albums already, it is far harder than it looks, from the money to the studio time. I also wonder about Angela and Ben, if they are going to do anything with their lives and the psychedelic marijuana farm that they have. Will they continue or they find another means to make a buck and bring joy to the people of Bainbridge Island?  
It is a strange sensation going through me right now. On the one hand, I have done it. I have made my way into a girl's life—and she made her way into my heart and my dick via my stomach and what I do in life—and now within a mere matter of hours, she and I will be living together, as boyfriend and girlfriend. She and I will have all of the food we could ever ask for and we will amp our sexy game together. But then after that, who knows?  
But then again, all I am going to say is this, the more I think about it and dwell on it, and the more I realize that I am all alone right now: I am terrified of the future. Absolutely, positively scared shitless of everything that is to come my way. But then again, at the same time, I have no fear.  
I have stared death in the face numerous times. I have been mocked, ridiculed, tormented, humiliated, and brought down to a level I was not in any way expecting. I have been alone, more alone than I have ever felt as a little kid in Danish school, as a teenager in Copenhagen, and six years ago when I first came to the United States for tennis training and I didn't know a soul. This alone feeling is something else, like there is something more, another nuance, to it. I feel, I want to say, “stripped,” as if everything I knew about myself, and about life, and about girls before now has been peeled away, and then shattered, and thrown into the garbage bin. The last time that happened Cliff was killed—speaking of which, I cannot believe it has been almost a year since that fucking freak accident.  
And, really the more I think about, the more I overthink this whole thing to death, another question arises.  
Sometimes I wonder about my relationship with Mia, like if it is really all that it is cracked up to be, and that is an obscure part of my personality, too. I always wonder about my relationships with people, be they my friends or a girlfriend like her. And since I am not the Lars I was when I walked into the bakery that day last fall, I start to wonder if this is the Lars she wants. The Lars whom she asked for, and fell madly in love with. I see her doubt, too: the lingering look of “are we right for each other?” upon her face, in her eyes, in her voice.  
That song she wrote… I will never forget that, in particular the line “you have got to hide your love away.” I want to hear it now, like I want to hear her perform it before me. If she does perform her song before me, perhaps I can talk her into producing it for her. The song that signified her doubts about the two of us. I feel like that was not only emblematic of her uncertainty about the two of us, but that should have been tip off for me, that she and I were in the midst of an affair, a thing “off to the side.” And to be frank, I still feel a bit used whenever I think about her confession to me in that hotel room.  
But what is done is done now, and she and I are together now. We are together and that is final. What she is going to do with her life is her decision, but whatever she chooses to do, I will stand behind her. My hope is that the doubts and fears on both of our parts are in vain and the two of us are indeed right for each other.  
In fact, as I write this, I am thinking of a round of song lyrics myself. I do come up with the spine and orientation of our songs after all. James is the lyricist, but if I want to write something, I shall do it. Perhaps some time in the future I can write a song for Mia, but until then, these are words I am thinking of off hand…

Take me down, somewhere towards the hard ground, to where the dried grass leaves me unsound.  
No, I am not the same as before, as to when the fallen needles brought me some more.  
Scars rest on my mind, like nothing else; please don't leave me asking why.  
There is a crack in my skull, and a blister, cold, bereft, and dull, and the place where I can sulk.  
Yes, I am afraid of it all, as the magic mushroom made me stand tall.  
Scars on my mind, like nothing else; please don't leave me asking why.  
Scars on my arms, aren't they something else? Please don't leave me asking why.  
The ground is my bed, though I swear I am not dead; just save the well and bring back my head.  
Maybe I am blind and amazed, and maybe I am open and insane, as himself, the whole family in pain.  
Scars on my mind, like nothing else; please don't leave me asking why.  
Scars on my arms, aren't they something else? Please don't leave me asking why.  
The spine of cold stone and bones, and anything else; don't leave me asking why.  
Scars on my mind, like nothing else; please don't leave me asking why.  
Scars on my arms, aren't they something else? Please don't leave me asking why.  
The spine of cold stone and bones, and anything else; don't leave me asking why.  
Don't leave me asking why.

Something like that, and if it ever reaches the light of day, I want to know how that shall play out in a recording studio somewhere. But as I look over it, I think to myself, what the fuck. Now I am starting to wonder about myself. I am starting to wonder where all of that came from. Why did I write that? Why did I write “don't leave me asking why” when I want to know more about myself now. Perhaps this could have crawled out of my subconscious, maybe? Who knows.  
But until then, Elske, I shall take a nap—I had not slept since I hit my head on the steering wheel and then dozed off a bit in the passenger seat next to Mia. I am already kicking off my shoes and taking off my pants: by the way—you are going to love this, too—I experienced that whole show down between us and Wayne and his dad with my jeans unbuttoned and with my stomach killing me. The one thing to make it even more epic and amazing is if my shoes were untied.  
Anyways, I am laying down on the couch now. Just a little cat nap for a couple of hours, and then I might get up to make another sandwich, and then take a nice long walk. This is a different part of town, too. My hope is I do not find any bakeries making fucking nasty stale danishes with the consistency of cardboard. Perhaps I can find another nice bar and find someone whom I can befriend, just so long as they don't get groin grabbingly drunk and yank me into an alleyway for a blowjob again. I want to know about this place, this new place that I have found my way up to. I have seen this town at night, but not a lot of it in the day. Speaking of which, before I close this, I wonder about Mount Hood now. Maybe Mia and I can take a little day trip to that back road Jerry told me about, or we can go hiking around there? I want to go back to Astoria, too. Go back to Astoria and call out “HEY YOU GUYS!” to someone I know again.  
All I know is when I wake up, I know I will face a new chapter of my life, one in which I shall be the same Lars but behave like a brand new one. I will still be the drummer of my band, but I will be the one who will get to have his cake and eat it, too, with his darling Mia.

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Members of Metallica, Megadeth, Soundgarden, and Others Tangled in a Deadly Romance… in My Own Backyard: A First Hand Personal Account Written by Olivia Starr on July 4, 1987

When my daughter Ashley came home one day last fall with a tall, lanky young man with long flowing golden blond hair and a Misfits shirt, I had no idea what to expect. When she introduced James to me, one thing that struck out to me about him in particular was his big beaming smile lined with star's teeth. When we got to know him and his home life, the son of a long haul truck driver and a Christian Scientist, Ashley told me she wanted him to become a part of our family. As a single mother who raised her by myself most of her life, I took the request with open arms, and opened my arms further out when she told me he was the lead singer and main song writer for his band, Metallica, formed a little more than six years ago in downtown Los Angeles and then they moved up to San Francisco to recruit their bassist Cliff Burton. Figure I was devastated the day she told me she and James broke it off, because we found the opportunity to become rather friendly with James and his band.  
One boy in particular, Lars Ulrich, struck me as one to watch out of the quartet with his powerful but simple rhythms and steady prowess. Twenty three years of age, a former aspiring tennis player converted to full time drummer, and originally hailing from the country of Denmark, I have found that he is also the friendliest and most sociable. He and James met after he posted an advertisement in The Recycler magazine down in the LA area, saying that he wanted to form a band. James and high school friend Ron McGovney introduced themselves to Lars, and then they met Dave Mustaine, whom James later asked to leave because whenever he had a sip of alcohol, he turned into a monster. But afterwards, as kind of a thumb in the nose to James, Dave soon formed his own band, Megadeth, and Lars stayed in touch with him even after they recruited former Exodus guitarist Kirk Hammett, and then Burton on bass after McGovney left shortly prior to Dave's departure.  
I met Lars one morning back in fall while going into downtown Seattle with my old friend Michaela de la Garza, the former glamorous “Madame Delicate” for those of you roaming the streets of Seattle long enough to remember her from the strip clubs of Georgetown. Ashley's best friend Mia had landed in the hospital the day before after being found on the beach by two local musicians Jerry Cantrell and Ben Shepherd and an elderly couple, and we were visiting her.  
We entered her hospital room to see her laying in the hospital bed with a full helmet of gauze wrapped about her head. Next to her, reclined back in the chair at her bedside was this little fellow: I knew nothing about him so I assumed he was a little boy with his chubby, round face and big bright eyes with prominent eyelashes and lovely full lips. He may as well have had feathers for hair, streaming down from all sides of his head over his shoulders. Everything about him was full and sensual, kind of erotic in fact.  
Mia, an immigrant herself but from Puerto Rico, had moved to Portland with her stepfather and mother when she was seven years old to escape the heat, humidity, and hurricanes, told me he was her boyfriend and that she had broken it off with another young man whom she almost married. Lars was kind enough to not only shake my hand but to tell me that he had been awaiting my arrival for some time now and he was thinking about running down to the hospital cafeteria downstairs to fetch something to eat for both him and her. He also asked Michaela and me if we wanted anything.  
Something about him struck me as odd. It could have been his healthily plump, lush appearance, and the fact that even by a mere ten second interaction I had a feeling that he was seducing me, but therein lay something else. Maybe it was the fact that he had popped up so soon and so hastily in Mia's life, or the fact that he acted in such a friendly manner. But I went with it and agreed to have something to eat. He left the room, thus leaving Michaela and myself with Mia, who suffered a near fatal blow to the head in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Pike Place Market.  
Mia's fiance, the man in her life before Lars, Wayne Davidson, was a scoundrel, at least at first glance.  
Over a year ago, while he still worked at the small newspaper in downtown Portland, I received a call on my answering machine from him asking me to call him whenever I had a chance. This was a Friday evening, a mere hour I had clocked out of my shift over at King Five News; Ashley stayed down in Portland with Michaela's daughters Marcia and Sonia, both of whom are also best friends with Mia, for the weekend.  
As a disclaimer, this action right here that I am about to describe is all my fault. A voice in the back of my mind told me to wait until Monday given the offices were closing for the weekend, but I persisted. When Mia and Wayne got together, and I met him while Ashley and I had dinner at her house, I had a hunch that he hid many a number of skeletons in his closet, but as a true believer in the power of love, I went with it. If I could love Ashley's father, warts and all, in all of his demons and all of his positives, I had faith in Mia. Again, completely my fault.  
I picked up the phone and called the number he had left for me on the machine. He answered and I soon found out he was at his parents' house in northeastern Portland, clear across town from Mia's house in the heart of the south side. I asked him what he wanted and he asked me if I knew anything about him and Mia, and I told him that, aside from the obvious “they're getting married soon,” no.  
Thus launched his incredibly licentious conversation with me, his telling me that his other girlfriend, a woman from Bainbridge Island named Angela, was back on the island and then following it up with the way he wanted to throw me onto the ground and slide his cock right down my throat while Ashley watched from her spot tied up against the wall. He also told the same things to Xana La Fuente, the girlfriend of local musician Andrew Wood, after he found out her name and number after a dinner with his parents at Mama's Mexican Kitchen in Belltown and a short show of Wood's band at the time, Malfunkshun, on the water front. He asked her to call him because he was a reporter and he wanted to know the full details of the up and coming music scene here in Seattle.  
He warned me that if I hung up on him, he would track me down and make everything he told me a reality. So, to prod him and to keep him away from Ashley, I asked him how he would make everything a reality.  
He told me, and I quote, “my dad will supervise.” Supervise, not “watch”, supervise.  
For brevity's sake, I will let you think about that while I continue this story.  
Returning to Lars, I had a feeling something had come up with Mia and Wayne, like they had broken up or at the very least separated from one another to tend to each other's affairs. But with him still out of the room, she told me that she had met Lars about two weeks before in the bakery she works at, Smell the Magic, and she had taken off her engagement ring because she knew about Wayne and Angela. If her fiance was cheating on her with someone else, why couldn't she do the exact same thing? She wanted to get even because Ashley told her about Wayne's mistress.  
But sure enough, even after her landing in the hospital with a horrific gash on her head, she found herself less wanting revenge against her groom to be and more truly desiring Lars, as like some kind of a placebo effect. She told me she awoke one morning wanting to bake him more and more pastries and “tickle his tummy and make him feel good” as she described it.  
He entered the bakery that morning, charming and with a rumble in his belly, and she stumbled upon the right specimen, like a biologist looking for a cure for AIDS or Ebola virus. He hasn't lived in this country very long, a little more than six years, spends an inordinate amount of time alone given the clash of cultures between the humble, tightly woven bohemian lifestyles so prevalent in Denmark and the freedom wielding, avid goal makers of the United States, is a bit traumatized following a horrific bus accident in Sweden that killed Burton, and with a face like his, it's understandable that Mia would see him as such an easy target. And as I said, with time and each kind word from Lars' full lips, she found herself losing the motivation to use him as a token and a trophy. I say this because she said that to me, verbatim, right there in her hospital room, right to mine and Michaela's faces.  
She also confessed that, since Wayne was such a volatile person with such a chip on his shoulder, she worried about him finding out her intentions. She also fretted over Lars finding out about her using him as an excuse and only getting into his pants and his stomach to level the playing field with her fiance. And I told her, “Mia—follow your heart. Who are you leaning more towards?”  
She told me Lars, and apparently Ashley asked her the same thing when she expressed it to her. At this point, Lars had returned with full plates of breakfast for us, and for himself. Perhaps it came from the fact that Denmark is such a humble country that it made a little more sense the second time around, but his body and the fact he was drummer for a heavy metal band suddenly made sense to me, and boy, is he a hearty eater. He has very little restrain when it comes to eating food to warm up and nourish his body. But the interesting thing with him is he manages to keep himself clean and healthy.  
Lars and Mia had met and acquainted themselves with members of the music scene here in Seattle, namely Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, both of whom are now the heart and soul of the Aberdeen band Nirvana, such that they both talked about wanting to move up here to be a part of it. But then I started to receive more and more calls from Wayne, from his parents' house—he never called me from their house. Each call was more lewd than the last, and he told me that if I block the number, he would slit Ashley's throat. At one point, it began to irritate me and thus I asked him why he was always with his parents when he made these phone calls.  
Again, he said “my dad will supervise.” I asked him what he meant by that, and there was silence on his end. I asked him again, and he told me, and once again, I quote, “my dad will beat the hell from me if I don't do what he says.” He added that it was his father who wanted to hurt Mia and any man she might have been with at the time. Figure I was in disbelief that Will wanted to harm such a charming sweet young man, a boy who in spite of his shortness makes up with such a beautiful body, a big, tender heart, and a wry stinging sense of humor. He also demanded the name of Mia's male mistress and I told him the truth. I had no idea what was going to happen and I was not going to risk it by telling a lie, either. But to fool him, just on par of my memory I told him he had a round, full face and long hair: I was so hypnotized by his eyelashes and his eyebrows and his overall beauty that I had forgotten the color of Lars' eyes.  
But on the other hand, Wayne's relationship with Mia was fueled by vitriol, paranoia, and petty bitter jealousy, and she carried a little bit of it into her relationship with Lars, that is until she started to change her mind and uncover the tender, sexy feelings for him in her body. He also told me that Angela had run off with the men of Soundgarden and became like they're groupie of sorts. She did it because she couldn't take living with him and his father lingering over his head and his mother constantly spiraling into alcohol use whenever Will pitched a fit. She especially became rather chummy with Hunter “Ben” Shepherd on Bainbridge Island, a big fan of the band.  
This is where it becomes rather complicated and messy, so again, for brevity's sake, I will just keep this simple. Sonia Bennett, Michaela's youngest daughter, became part of a three way with Kirk and Marcia, and then started taking a page out of Lars and Mia's book and socializing with the locals here in Seattle, in particular Jerry Cantrell, Layne Staley of Diamond Lie and Alice N' Chains, and then finally Ben Shepherd. When she and Ben started seeing each other, Angela did the same vengeance thing as how Mia did with Lars and started dating everyone in Soundgarden, including front man Chris Cornell. It was open relationships galore, all against the backdrop of Wayne doing plenty of snooping around for clues that his bride to be was having an affair, and that he could catch her in the act, oar his father's abusive nature and pervading sense of paranoia. He apparently told his dad that he thought Mia had developed a drinking problem given she always smelled of tequila shortly after she and Lars met. My research indicates they developed some conspiracy theory about her.  
And then… well, I'm not sure if I'm frank. This is where it gets vague: something made Angela snap and she went after Sonia at one point, and she found she was with Lars. Since her and Wayne's relationship was as, if not more, caustic than Mia's relationship with him, she told me she saw Lars and Sonia as like “the relationship she had always wanted.” Where that would have been an opportunity to nab either of them—either to tell Ben his mistress was a whore or Wayne that his future wife's male mistress was a whore—she backed out and became a friend to Lars later on. Thus, Wayne, under his father's direction got messy and desperate: he bypassed me and went straight to my daughter for answers given her closeness to Mia and Mia's friendliness to the Seattle music scene. Needless to say, I was not happy when I found out she had broken protocol and given him a copy of her manuscript after he blackmailed her.  
So of course I was shook when Lars asked me for a copy. I was in Ballard reading and having a cup of coffee when he walked up to me one morning asking for a copy of Ashley's interview with Kurt Cobain, an interview kept confidential because of school and because that's how we do it in the world of press. He sat there before me, almost thirty pounds heavier and looking much more rounder and sexier from all of the delicious food he was eating, and then I remembered his sincerity and his helpfulness. I refused to believed that Angela would label this boy a debaucher or a sex addict.  
And it wasn't until Lars reunited with Mia when I found out they—and James and Ashley, too—had split up: Ashley said she wanted to follow her heart and it wasn't happening with her and James, which I understood. But much to my chagrin, and the fact I let Lars' name slip out, came an intense round on Wayne's part. He had the eight ball right in the corner; and Ashley told me he threatened to bury Lars and Mia if he saw them together.  
He almost did with the assistance of his dad, down at the bakery and at the hair salon Curl Up and Dye, where Mia works at. They had already gotten Wayne's mother Jennifer “Jen” Davidson rip roaringly drunk and then dumped her into the river when they found her Mia's house. Wayne also heavily assaulted Chad Channing of Nirvana, thinking he was Lars given their similar appearance, and he threatened to hurt Ben Shepherd and Andrew Wood if Angela didn't talk; neither of those men are in the hospital recuperating from horrible injuries, so I will let you figure out that one for yourself.  
But luckily, Chris Cornell called the police on the Davidson men when he learned of what was happening, and they caught them before they upped the ante on their body count—and there was a lot of people in that salon, namely Dave Mustaine, whom Sonia and Marcia grew rather friendly with and Michaela's ex boyfriend Trent Reznor.  
Occam's razor says the simplest answer is the correct one, and the answer here is Lars was an innocent man caught up in a web of lies and blood lust when he just wants to make music and fill his hungry Danish belly. Now that it's all over and all behind him, he and Mia are turning over a new leaf together down in Portland, that is if it can last. I wish them both well, with all of the love in my heart in soul to them. I hope they get married and they become a happy little family. But I just don't see it lasting: he's velvet where she's velcro. He wants to live life to the fullest extent while she's got problems through the roof. Her mother wants nothing to do with her, her stepfather doesn't care what happens to her, and her fiance is looking at life. But until the day comes, perhaps he can have his cake and eat it, too, now with his darling Mia.


End file.
